


Error

by AndyAO3



Series: Clockwork Detectives and Imported Antiques [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Blasphemy, Crossover, Dirty Talk, Drunken Shenanigans, Fluff, M/M, Probably Badly Mangled Translations, Sad Robots, There's A Tag For That
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:50:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 24,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5211695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yes, he's charming. But he's also drunk and babbling in Chinese. And a robot is the last person that anyone should be trying to charm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. meltdown

**Author's Note:**

> This was written at 5 in the morning with many much mistakes. Probably. First time writing Nick. Translation was provided by google and cross-referenced with a friend who's taken classes.

The first time Nick Valentine saw the so-called "Sole Survivor" was enough to tell him that this guy was different. It was how he just... Stared. Blinked at Nick as his Handy trundled into the room behind him. The detective could practically see the gears turning in the poor bastard's head; clearly, nobody had bothered to tell him that the private eye he'd be rescuing was a synth.

But he wasn't scared, Nick realized. And when the guy tossed Nick a spare ten mil, pulling an Institute energy weapon out in its place for himself... Well. If nothing else, it was obvious to Nick that his new friend was gonna be an interesting one.

He said his name was Li. "Well, that's all I ever ask people to try and pronounce, anyway," was the afterthought. Nick had gotten a chuckle out of that, a welcome bit of humor in the midst of so many damn stairwells that he could swear the vault they were escaping from was built by a fitness instructor. Then this Li character successfully talked his way out of what would've been one helluva shootout, and Nick went from mildly surprised to downright impressed.

A couple of hours later, that same guy was sitting across from Nick at his desk, draped over the chair reserved for clients in a way that implied exhaustion. Regret and sleepless nights dulled those dark eyes as the man spoke, his voice flat as he described why he had come to find the famous Nick Valentine in the first place.

Hell, forget being impressed; to Nick it was a damned miracle that this fella was still sane. And after several weeks of knowing the guy and seeing what he could do, Nick was definitely inclined to cut him some slack.

But Li was very, very drunk.

It wasn't like it was Nick's job to keep his friend and new detective work partner from doing the occasional stupid thing - Li was a grown man who could make his own decisions, and it wasn't like he hadn't earned the right to a drink or two - but having Ellie burst in to nervously sputter out that Li was plastered down in the town center was not Nick's idea of good news. Even less so when he was expected to retrieve said partner before anyone got offended and decked the guy.

That was how Nick Valentine ended up having to drag Li Xiao back to his tiny HQ, one spindly arm draped loosely around his shoulders while the man babbled gibberish at him.

"我爱你，" Li declared, leaning in close enough for Nick to smell his breath. Not just smell it, either; as a synth Nick could detect the chemical composition if he thought about it hard enough, and that was somehow even worse.

"Yeah, yeah. 'Woe eye knee' to you too, buddy," he grumbled in reply, rolling his eyes when Li merely giggled. Did the guy even know how ridiculous he sounded? Was he even speaking a real language? Even if he had translation software, Nick doubted he'd be able to get through the slurring.

"我想吻你，" the man purred, ending the statement with a bubbling laugh. "这是愚蠢的，但我想。"

"Just give me a heads-up if you're thinking about puking on my coat, alright?"

The fact that Li only blew a raspberry and continued rambling was not encouraging.

Getting the door open proved to be the hardest part; Li kept slumping, forcing the detective to hold his weight and keep him from falling face-first into the dirt. Nick was actually half-tempted to let him fall, but in reality he wasn't that mean. Besides, Li was still Nick's friend (and by then, he'd earned the right to be called such) even if he was a train wreck of a person, and at least turning to drinking as a coping method was better than getting into fights or putting his dick in anything that moved and coming back with a post-apocalyptic form of chlamydia.

Once inside, Nick dragged the drunken human down the hall to the tiny bedroom and dumped him unceremoniously on the bed. Unsupported, Li could only flop back onto the mattress. "你小气鬼，" he whined.

"Sure thing, pal," Nick replied, turning to leave. "We'll see if you're still singing the same tune come morni--"

And that was as far as he got, because a pair of surprisingly strong hands had grabbed him by the coat and yanked hard enough to make him stumble back onto the bed with a squawk. He twisted, started to say _what the hell_ , but he didn't even make it past the first half-syllable before somewhat fumbling fingers found the back of his neck and tugged him down and--

His processes jerked and stuttered. Li was kissing him. Actually kissing him like he wasn't made of metal and plastic and wires and codes. It wasn't unprecedented - humans had kissed him before, and those human memories he'd been saddled with weren't exactly lacking - but damn if it wasn't surreal every time, feeling it through a translation of sensor data to sensation, chemical composition interpreted as smell and taste.

But the unreality of it wasn't what caused him to jerk back. It was that Li was the one doing it. And that-- that was. That wasn't a good line of thought to be chasing after. At all. He knew it wasn't. Didn't matter whether he'd thought about it before or not.

It was almost as disquieting as realizing that he'd thought of reasons why he _shouldn't_ before thinking of reasons why Li _couldn't_ , being drunk and all. "I think you should get some sleep," Nick said, impressed with himself for managing to sound calm about it.

 

Li huffed and let his head fall back against the bed. "我讨厌你，" he mumbled, but his hands fell away anyway.

With that Nick left him there, while hoping quietly that morning would bring dulled memory instead of embarrassment.


	2. no logic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One helluva night leads to one helluva morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By popular demand! Discussion, grumpiness, hangovers. I'm honored you guys like this stuff, seriously. No beta again so there might be a mistake or two.
> 
> Meanwhile, working on another chapter of Face On and 2/3 of the way through. This drabble thing isn't nearly as structured or serious (nor was it ever meant to be continued but apparently y'all like it so it's getting a continuation) so it's honestly a fun change of pace.

Nick didn't need to look up from his paperwork to see that Li was awake; he could tell from the agonized groan that came from the other room.

"Mornin', sleeping beauty," the detective said.

Li whined petulantly, and Nick heard the spare bed creaking under what was probably the man's shifting weight. "I feel like I've been skullfucked by a behemoth," he grumbled.

"Replace the 'behemoth' part with everyone's fairweather friend Jack Daniels and you wouldn't be half wrong," Nick drawled. "What's your preference, hair of the dog or good old aspirin?"

"Aspirin would be fine." A pause. "Water would also be nice."

"Good call." Nick would've suggested juice, but that was hard to come by out in the Wastes when most fruits had grown tough enough skins to make juicing them difficult. Rifling through the drawers at his desk, he'd soon retrieved a bottle of clean water and aspirin that were both usually reserved for Ellie - whatever, he could get more for her later - and stood up with a creaking of unserviced joints and servos to bring them to the back room.

When he got there, he saw that Li had managed to sit up on the bed. The guy had his head in his hands, and his hair was down; Nick guessed that the usual topknot had proven to be too much stimulation for a hangover to allow for. He handed over the aspirin and water without comment and received a mumbled _thanks_ in return as unsteady hands uncapped both bottles in such a way as to make as little noise as possible. Even the rattle of aspirin inside the bottle produced a wince.

Nick waited until pills were taken and water was gulped down to say anything. "So," he began. "How much do you remember?"

That made Li cringe for a completely different reason. "I'm guessing you're not about to just write it off as drunken antics, are you?"

There was usually a grain of truth to the things people did under the influence. Did, and said. Nick was still curious about what all that Chinese had meant, especially after... _That_. Though admittedly, the curiosity wasn't entirely professional on his part, either. "Sounds like you do remember. Gonna tell me what that was all about, Li?"

"What'll you do if I don't?"

"Turn on more lights, probably." A cheap tactic, but Nick wasn't above cheap tactics when it came to getting the truth. "Bang some pots together. Find a fork to put in the garbage disposal. Get the radio in here and turn it up to full volume. Something like that."

"You're evil," Li accused. "You're a sick, twisted, horrible, sadistic robot."

"And you're beating around the bush."

"Can't it wait?"

"It can, but it probably shouldn't." If they put this off, there was the chance that Li would just talk his way out of having to answer. Hungover Li was much easier to get a confession out of, and Nick intended to take advantage of that. There was no shame or remorse in it. How could there be? Nick had spent most of the night trying and failing to convince himself that it was nothing; the thought that it was _something_ was enough to drive him to question, to probe.

Anything that was _something_ could fester if left alone and untended long enough, and Nick didn't want that. He cared too much, and Li deserved better than to be left out in the cold.

"Look, pal," Nick said, dropping to a crouch so that he was closer to eye level. His knees protested the movement, but he paid it little mind. "It's not like I enjoy giving you the third degree. I just wanna get a clearer picture'a what's goin' through that head of yours."

Li sighed, his eyes flicking towards the detective. He was the picture-perfect example of exhaustion right then, and Nick sincerely doubted that it could all be blamed on drinking. "Honestly, Nick," he murmured, "I'm not quite sure of it all myself."

"Then start with a translation," the detective suggested. Damn if he wasn't going soft on this guy. "Remember what you said at all?"

"I said--" Li's voice caught, and he ducked his head down to bury his face in his hands with a groan. "God, nevermind what I said. It'd sound worse in English."

Nick brought his left hand up to pat his friend gently on the shoulder. "S'alright, take your time."

"No, it's stupid. It doesn't matter." The guy's eyes were red when his hands fell from his face. "Listen, Nick--"

"If you're gonna apologize, then don't," Nick said, cutting him off. "I'm not mad, I'm curious."

It was as effective as a slap in the face would've been; all Li did for several moments was stare. "You-- but I didn't give you any choice. I didn't ask."

"No, you didn't. And you're not givin' me one now, either." There. They were finally getting somewhere. Damn shame that where they were going kinda pissed Nick off on principle though; he didn't much care for people making assumptions about what he wanted without getting his input first, but that was exactly what Li was doing. Probably been doing it for a while, too.

Was that what had gotten the dumb bastard drinking to begin with? Probably not. It could definitely be a contributing factor, but Nick doubted it was the only reason. He'd caught way too much in the way of sarcastic self-deprecation from Li to think a one-sided crush was the only thing weighing the guy down. He also wasn't so narcissistic as to think that someone would be that broken up over him.

But that did leave Nick in one helluva position. What he wanted was-- well. Really, what he wanted didn't matter. He wasn't even sure he had a right to want anything in this case. He was a synth, for chrissakes-- a goddamn _robot_. Bound to be disappointing. He'd told people so before, and they'd eventually agreed, even if sometimes they insisted on one or two attempts to sate their curiosity first.

Yet wasn't that also a form of assuming what people would want? "I wouldn't want you to do anything with me just because you're feeling contrary, Nick," Li said quietly. "Or out of obligation, or anything like that."

Nick sighed, heaving himself back up to stand upright. "I think you and I both know I don't work that way," he answered. "I'll go ahead and let you do whatever it is you need to do. Got some paperwork that needs filling out."

Li huffed a laugh. "You do that. I'll just be trying to do as little as possible until I feel less like standing up will lead to having to mop the floor."

The detective simply nodded in response, leaving the room to head back to his desk up front without so much as a chuckle at the quip. Frankly, he didn't think he'd get around to the paperwork for all the clutter in his head he needed to sort through, and that clutter was thanks in no small part to a certain stubborn sole survivor.

 


	3. old radio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Definitely spending too much time around humans; being contrary is hardly the best habit to've picked up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nick you're not even sure why you like the stupid brat why are you doing this oh never mind.
> 
> AT LEAST IT ISN'T AS MUCH OF A SLOW BURN AS HARKNESS IS. Then again that'd require Nick being as bad at interpersonal relations as Harkness is, and that's kinda difficult considering Harkness greets people by glowering at them and barking "is there a problem". Two very very different robots here. I love it.

Things got awkward between them after that.

Li was quick to leave the moment his hangover would allow for it, clothes rumpled and hair not tied back as effectively as it could've been. Nick wasn't surprised, nor did he move to halt his partner's progress; if the guy needed space and time to think, that was fine. Expected, even. And besides, Li wasn't the only one who needed a little breathing room. Because Nick didn't know where he stood yet either.

Damn shame that Li wasn't a synth. If he were, there wouldn't be a doubt in Nick's mind about any of it. Take mortality and a potential for misunderstanding out of the equation, and yeah. That could work. But Nick _knew_ humans. He knew how they operated. Li was a rare breed, sure, but there were some things that a guy had to experience to really know them. There'd be expectations placed on the detective's shoulders that he wasn't sure he could carry, and there'd always be things that Li just didn't get. Things that Nick would have to explain, but would never quite take.

So he'd have to go over the details again, and again. Filling in newfound blanks each time. Li would apologize, and Nick would be patient, but it'd wear on both of them if it happened often enough. Between that and the niggling disappointments that were sure to happen--

It just wasn't a good idea.

But if it was solidly not a good idea - if the thought of a synth and a human just wasn't viable - then why was Nick still having trouble deciding?

Hell. He really did have it bad, didn't he?

Leaning back in his chair, Nick pulled a cigarette out of his jacket along with his lighter. Metal fingers set the cigarette between his lips while his undamaged hand flicked the lighter open. The whole ritual was pointless - he knew it even as he took a long drag that sent smoke wafting over the exposed wiring and bare sensors in his neck - but it helped him think, even if he couldn't really say why beyond a hunch or two. Once he'd lit up, he tossed the lighter onto the desk casually with a loud clatter and settled back down into his chair, eyeing his mountains of paperwork and case files without really seeing them.

It wasn't a question of wanting. It was a question of whether or not wanting should be allowed to take the reins over good sense. But good sense was what people turned to as a thing to blame for every bad thing that had ever happened in this godforsaken hellhole, wasn't it? Wanting was what kept people going; good sense was what told them to stop. In the end, it was all just rationalization. A person could make anything sound logical if they put their mind to it, and people who were afraid and wanted to feel sensible would listen.

So then that had to mean that Nick was... Afraid?

Well. Yeah, actually. He was. The main thing stopping him was trepidation. He didn't want to get burned, and Li definitely had a way with fanning the kind of flames that could do manage to do it. That hadn't made him any less inclined to stick close to it yet, though. So why stop now?

Once he'd figured it out, the whole thing seemed a lot less daunting. Like sliding a drawer shut after it'd been jammed for a while. All he'd had to do was fiddle with it some, toss the idea around in his head until it was a neat little hard-packed snowball of thoughts and notions ready to be flung back at his partner. A snowball that might have a rock in it. Hey, Li started it.

He put his cigarette out in the too-full ashtray on his desk, nodding to himself. That settled it. He was willing to give it a shot if Li was; the ball was officially in his partner's court. Some human part of him marvelled at how quickly he'd come to his decision, but the part of him that was ones and zeroes was quick to remind that human side that, again, he knew how humans worked. And Li had been serious, Nick could see as much. The guy wouldn't have responded like the cat was out of the bag if his impulses hadn't had some thought behind them.

Alright then. All he had to do was wait for his partner to get back.

\---

The door burst open so hard that it slammed into the wall.

"Get your things." Li had his laser pistol in its holster and was busy shoving copious amounts of spare energy cells into every pocket he had. He'd already put on his makeshift armor over his clothes, still disheveled from earlier. He'd also gotten this fierce, intent look in his eyes like he had an _idea_.

Dubious, Nick decided not to move from his spot just yet. So they weren't going to talk about what'd happened? Or was this just a part of Li's ongoing attempt to give himself room to think? "That's a lot of heat you're packin' there, Li," he commented. "Mind telling me where you're suddenly so intent on going?"

"I have a lead on how to find my son," his partner replied.

Nick froze. A lead? They had a lead: heading back to Goodneighbor with Kellogg's cybernetics in an icebox. Li had refused, and the cybernetics were still in their icebox. "I don't follow."

Li growled in irritation. " _Follow the freedom trail_ , Nick."

Oh. Wait, what? "You're gonna chase down the Railroad?"

"I lived in Boston. I know where the Freedom Trail goes." The man stalked over to Nick's desk, smacking his palms down on it and leaning over to look the detective in the eye. "The Railroad helps synths, right? They fight the Institute. They must know how to get in. Someone in their organization has to know."

Nick squinted at his partner, disbelieving. "What makes you think they're gonna help you get into a place they spend most'a their time trying to get people out of?"

"Enemy of my enemy. They have just as much interest in tearing the Institute down as I do."

"And you'd wanna bring me to, what-- make a good impression?"

"I'm bringing you because I trust you," Li said.

Nick gave him a flat look. "You wanna make a good impression, don't you."

"If I say yes, will you come with me?"

"I was gonna come with you anyway. Someone's gotta watch your ass in mutant territory." With a tired sigh, Nick pushed himself up out of his chair and plucked his own pistol out of its usual drawer, stowing it in his coat. Well. It was a plan. "Piper's gonna wring your neck, y'know. This'd be a helluva scoop for her."

Li straightened up to beam at him, looking smug. Smug and well-armed. "It won't be the only interview I owe her at this point. C'mon." Turning on his heel, he headed for the door.

Back to work, then.

"Oh, and about this morning--" Li began, stopping Nick in his tracks.

So they _were_ gonna talk about it. "Yeah?" the detective prodded.

Li wasn't looking at him. Instead, the guy was biting his lip, staring at the doorknob he already had his hand on. "Just-- just forget I said or did anything. I didn't mean anything by it."

Right, because that was how people worked. "Uh-huh. Sure you didn't."

"I mean it, Nick," Li insisted.

"Coulda fooled me."

Was Li pouting? Looked like it. "Damn it, you're supposed to believe me. Stop that."

"I'll stop poking holes in your statements when they stop being flimsy."

"You're not going to make this easy for me at all, are you?"

It was hard for Nick to not laugh. "Easy? You're the one not making it easy on yourself, y'know."

"Nick..."

"I'm serious," the detective said. He couldn't help his smirk, even when Li turned to face him again. "Not once have you gone 'now what?' or 'what do you think, Valentine?' outside of the job. Starting to think the 'knight in shining armor' description was a little on-the-nose, what with you tryin'a save me from bad decisions." Which was... Cute, to a point. Annoying beyond that, but Nick was able to find amusement in someone thinking of an old beat-up robot as needing saving.

Especially when that someone was five-foot-two. "So you admit it's a poor decision." The guy had a look like he was trying to be stern and detatched, and failing. Again, cute. Reminded Nick of a puffed-up pigeon.

"It's a stupid decision, I'll give you that." Cautiously, Nick approached his partner. Got in real close in that little alcove by the door. "What's a human see in a scrap-heap synth? For that matter, what's a synth see in a bossy li'l shrimp of a human?"

Li had moved as Nick did, and his back was soon pressed against the door. "I don't know," he said, and it sounded honest. "What _does_ a synth see in a bossy little shrimp of a human?"

"Hell if I know." Nick smirked at the way Li's brow knotted, a frown tugging at two hundred year old scars that time spent in a glorified fridge had preserved. Relics, both of them. "Wanna give it a shot anyway?"

He'd take the kiss that followed as Li penciling in a _yes_.

 


	4. matryoshka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's looking a lot like Li has no idea what he's doing, and Nick can't believe how okay he is with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter names do have a theme, just... don't think about them too hard.
> 
> Yep, this is the one I've chosen to update and continue. It took a lot of deliberation but it's just too good a prospect to pass up.

It wasn't that Nick didn't support this whole "go to the Railroad for help" idea. It was that Li had lied through his damn teeth.

"I want to help synths," the man said, his posture straight and defiant. Nick didn't say a thing at the time. He knew the guy well enough to know that there was always some kind of plan going on in that pretty little head. Nor did he doubt that there was at least some grain of truth to the statement. But helping synths wasn't why they were there.

From the raised eyebrow Deacon had given them, he was just as skeptical. So Nick wasn't surprised when, after they arrived at the escape tunnel that would take them to the Railroad's old HQ, the man had questions.

"So," Deacon began, tugging an old grate aside; the thing shrieked when it was shifted, but Deacon didn't ask for any help in doing so. "What's your real story, li'l dude?"

"I told you," Li answered; he was small enough that he barely had to duck his head to get through the opening, but Nick wasn't quite as lucky. "I want to help."

Deacon shook his head. "Nah, I don't buy that."

"I have Nick Valentine as a partner. Is that somehow not invested enough?"

"No offense to Nicky, but for all we know he could be an Institute spy."

Nick snorted. "None taken. Good on you people for being suspicious."

Li stopped in the middle of the tunnel to turn and pout at the both of them. "Nick, you're supposed to be helping."

"Ain't helping anyone if you don't tell the truth, sweetheart," the synth replied.

"Cute as this little lovers' quarrel is," Deacon said, "you still haven't answered the question, and we've got things to do, so..."

"Fine! My son's been taken by the Institute and I don't want your people to think my loyalty could be in question because of it." Li huffed. "Happy?"

Deacon's answer was a light shrug. "All you had to say, man."

They continued towards the Switchboard without another word on the matter. Meanwhile, Nick decided to file it away for later that Li had made no remark about the "lovers' quarrel" statement. He couldn't help but think that it was significant, whether Deacon had been serious about it or not.

\---

In a couple of days, Li had managed to ingratiate himself to the Railroad folks pretty thoroughly.

Didn't take much. Clearing out the Switchboard had been relatively simple since many of the old security systems were still working - just not turned on - and Institute synths provided an ample supply of fusion cells for Li's favorite guns (which freed up revolver rounds for Nick) so it hadn't even been much of a drain on their resources. Deacon had showered them with praise afterward in front of Desdemona, who had grudgingly admitted that it took a lot to impress Deacon enough for him to lie so outrageously.

When it came to picking names, Li went with "Chairman". Nick got a chuckle out of it, and Deacon looked like he was about to explode into laughter; when the humans seemed to unanimously decide that Nick needed a codename too, he went with "Gumshoe". That was the point where Deacon really _did_ burst into laughter.

Then came humoring Tinker Tom - at Glory's request - whose battery acid concoction somehow managed to give Li a nosebleed.

"Could've told you it was a bad idea," Nick remarked.

Li's voice was slightly muffled by the tissue up his nose when he answered. "No worse than what I did in college," he said, which Nick took to mean that his idiot human was perfectly fine even if Carrington was alternating between sputtering about how reckless it was and scolding Tinker Tom.

 _His_ idiot human. Not just his partner anymore. Hell.

With a final glance at the man, Nick shook his head and ducked into the "secret" escape passage, pulling out a cigarette and his lighter from an inner pocket of his coat as he went. Not that he thought anyone would be offended by his smoking, he just... Needed a moment to himself. Needed to process things.

He couldn't shake the feeling that Li was doing this Railroad thing for him. To impress him, maybe, or to earn his trust or something. It was better than trying to shower him in caps or gifts, Nick would give the guy that much. Still, it was almost like Li didn't have the faintest idea of what to do with him, so the idiot had gone with the first thing that came to mind-- and it wasn't surprising that first thing to come to mind had been that Nick was a synth.

Leaning back against the wall, Nick lit his cigarette, took a long drag, and sighed as he reminded himself that he had been the one to encourage this new _thing_ between them. A lapse in judgment, clearly. Even if it was sort of endearing when Li was in his element and having fun as he got people wrapped around his stub of a little finger with his undeniable charm and bright-eyed enthusiasm for doing the "right" thing--

Hell, thinking it was endearing was probably a lapse in judgment too.

"Like something out of a spy novel, isn't it?" came Li's voice from the entrance into the main area, a grin implied by his voice. Nick chuckled, not bothering to look up.

"Sounds almost romantic when you put it like that," he replied. "Begs the question, which one of us is the love interest?"

"In a miraculous subversion of standard tropes, I'd say it's probably you." Moments later, Nick made a disgruntled sound as the cigarette was plucked from his fingers and set between the human's lips instead; Li inhaled deeply with the ease of a chain smoker, propping himself up against the wall at Nick's side and sighing. He'd taken the tissue out of his nose, at least. "Though I'd be willing to wear the dress if you asked nicely."

Nick snorted. Now there was a mental image. "Somehow I don't think you'd quite pull off the look, sweetheart."

"You'd be surprised how far good hips and careful application of cosmetics can go in that regard." Li tipped his head back, pulling in another breath through the cigarette and closing his eyes.

Yeah, Nick could definitely see it. Pretty as a picture. In his head, anyway. "Well, call me biased, but I'm of the opinion that even without the make-up and the dress you could still give a dolled-up dame from a pre-war holovid a run for her money," he said. "Not that I've ever been one for those types to begin with."

"Not even the old pre-war Nick?"

The old synth chuckled again. "The old pre-war Nick was middle-aged, Jewish, and just this side of charitable enough to be permanently on the edge of being dead broke. Even without Jenny having been in the picture, a big screen blonde bombshell wouldn't look twice at him."

Li hummed knowingly. "I wonder if I ever met him in passing."

"Doubtful. Boston was a pretty big town then, and if you never ended up in criminal records then the old Nick probably never even knew you existed."

"Huh." Taking another drag, Li seemed to turn that thought over in his mind for a few seconds. "What about a woman named Angelica Nguyen?"

Nick blinked for a minute. Times like those, he really wished he had translation software. "Hell of a surname. Spell it out?"

"Oh, it's Vietnamese. N-G-U-Y-E-N." Li recited the letters with a sort of detatched boredom that implied he'd done it many, many times before. Almost like he would've been offended once, but had long since stopped bothering with being annoyed.

And... Yeah, Nick remembered the name all right. Helped that it was distinctive. "Two cases of inciting a riot, three cases of resisting arrest, two cases of vandalism, some property damage fines, and on a Fed watchlist for possible ties to the Communist party and a couple of anti-governmental conspiracies."

She'd come into his precinct a couple of times, dragged through in a set of cuffs. Always pissed off the boys on duty since she seemed to know more about the letter of the law than whoever brought her in (and it didn't help that she was small, angry, and quick to call them on the slightest hint of bigotry either). The only thing she hadn't talked her way out of was one of the riots, which she confessed to and calmly paid the fines for. Been downright smug about it too; ticked off the bigwigs at the DA's office something fierce that the one time they managed to get her had been the one time she'd let them.

Old Nick had always gotten a kick out of it when cases like that came through, especially when they were native citizens. Always good when the wiseasses who shouted for deportation didn't have anywhere to deport the perp to; forced 'em to look at why they liked deportation so much in the first place. "Went quiet after a while, sometime in '72 if I remember right. She clean up her act?"

"Mm. Joined the Army around the same time I did." Li smiled fondly, staring at the opposite wall without really looking at it. "She was my wife."

Nick let out a huff of laughter.

"What?"

"Imagining you in uniform," Nick answered. "Helluva job they must've had trying to hem up the sleeves so they'd be short enough."

He laughed inappropriately _again_ when the halfhearted punch that followed hurt Li's knuckles more than his shoulder.

 


	5. two breaths walking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're just rolling with it, wherever it takes them. It's not so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaahhhh it's been ages since I've written a proper smut and I'm amazed at how easily it managed to work. Li has the worst thoughts, but I decided to let them go mostly unfiltered in case there was any doubt as to his proclivities. I only stopped him when he was about to go on a tangent about sounding and cock rings. Like, seriously Li, leave some for other chapters. 
> 
> /runs and hides in a shame-corner

Nick was a bit surprised by just how readily he'd accepted Li's weird idea of courtship. Anyone else, and he would have immediately called the man on it; with Li, it was just another piece of the puzzle. Another layer of the mystery solved. And honestly? The detective would be lying if he said it wasn't appealing in its own way. His partner was just so damn _earnest_ about it, pitching in gladly because it meant another thing to do that might make people like him. It made him easy to believe when he said something that was more blatantly a lie.

It didn't make Nick believe him, of course. But Nick had seen the limits of how far that charm went - the sorts of people that Li refused to be nice to - so his perspective was a little different. If being liked and trying to appeal to an old synth were the only things Li wanted, maybe Nick could bring himself to resent all the misdirection and dodging. As things stood, Nick had too many memories of what things had been like pre-war to judge the man.

Tactics like that probably kept Li safe.

"A time to reap and a time to sow," the man said, poking at a pile of ashes that had once been a raider with the toe of his boot. Then he hummed to himself, pivoting on one heel and eyeing the structure around them. Nick recalled it being a pretty little church before the world had ended. "Abrahamic religions always baffled me."

"Don't see why," Nick mumbled, easing himself down to sit on one of the three pews that hadn't been upturned; he grunted as the joints in his knees creaked in protest. Could probably use a tune-up. Ah well.

Li settled himself against one of the ones that _had_ been upturned, crossing one leg over the other and bringing his pip-boy up to fiddle with it. "Hmm. Well, more the practicioners than the religions themselves. There's a certain innocence in believeing that your chosen deity is infallible. Personally, I've always been more of a mind that if there _is_ a God, then they're probably a giggling sadist with a penchant for random frat party humor."

"Temptin' fate to say that in a church, y'know."

"Coming from someone who forgot to genuflect? Hah! Pardon me if I don't feel particularly threatened, fellow blasphemer."

"It's a little hard on the knees these days, sweetheart. Besides, wrong denomination."

"Excuses." Li dismissed the statement with a wave of his hand. "I'd be willing to bet you weren't even baptised."

Nick let out a snort. "No shit."

"Actually, that would be a good question to pose to a theologist," the man continued, tapping a finger to his chin. "Can synths be baptised?"

"I'd assume so for the Gen 3's, unless you were gonna base it on something like reproductive ability. And if you did that, you'd hafta rule out a lot of humans while you were at it."

Li shook his head. "I think you know full well that I'm not talking about Gen 3 synths, Nick."

Of course not, but that assumed that Nick would actually want such a thing in the first place. Sighing to himself, the old detective leaned back against the pew and peered at his partner from under the brim of his hat. "Then the question you'd supposed to ask would be 'do synths have souls' or somesuch. Ain't that the deciding factor?"

"I wouldn't know. I don't study religion, apart from a course or two I took in college to pass the time." The smirk on the man's face was almost catlike as he leaned forward, chin resting in his palms and his elbows on his knees. "What do you think? Do you have a soul?"

For a long while, Nick just looked at him. Appraising. Calculating. Nick knew people, after all. Eventually he pulled out a cigarette, lighting up and setting it between the parched synthetic skin of his lips. Inhaling and letting the smoke waft over his sensors.

Outside, it was one of Boston's rare beautiful days. Sixty degrees, sunny, and not so much as a hint of static in the air to indicate a coming radstorm. They had a good four hours yet until that Railroad rep would get there with a not-so-mysterious "package" and not another living soul in the area as far as Nick could tell.

"What's this about, Li?" he asked finally. "Really."

Li wilted under the weight of the detective's scrutiny, sighing and shifting his gaze to the floor. His fingers tapped an uneven rhythm against his face, never going quite still. "I don't know," he said. "I had half an idea when I knew we'd be here for a few hours, then I thought it might offend your sensibilities, and after that I got sidetracked."

"An idea," Nick repeated. Uh-huh. "So what's the idea?"

"Oh, you wouldn't like it. It's terrible. Right up there with the ideas I get involving that Paladin Danse fellow and creative implementation of a couple of silk scarves."

It was all Nick could do just to keep the cigarette from falling and burning his tie. "--a bit outta the left field there, sweetheart," he said, clearing his throat.

The smirk returned to curve those pretty lips once more. "I did say you wouldn't like it."

"Not sayin' I don't like it," Nick protested. He bent to drop the cigarette on the floor and put it out with his boot, just for the sake of avoiding any mishaps. "Just, uh. This isn't exactly the sort of setting I'd pick for that kinda discussion."

"Nonsense. We've already established that we're a couple of blasphemers, haven't we? It's not like it can get worse."

Damn if the man didn't have a point. The idea that it wasn't proper still tugged at Nick from somewhere in the back of his mind, but neither of them was particularly proper anyway. And, well. Aside from them being in a church, Nick couldn't think of a reason not to indulge a little. It was as private as they were going to get for a while; even at one of Li's settlements his status as General meant that people could walk in at any time with something new that needed seeing to, while Nick's door was always open to Ellie amongst others.

It was a gap in both their schedules. "Of course, I won't bother you about it if you'd rather not," Li said, leaving the opening in case it was needed. It wasn't - and Nick had a feeling that Li knew as much already - but the gesture was significant. Ticked a few boxes that had otherwise been left blank when it came to figuring the man out.

Nick leaned heavily against the pew, turning the idea over in his mind. Letting go of a resigned sort of sigh, he made a beckoning notion with his damaged hand and patted his leg with his intact one. "C'mere."

That was the last bit of permission Li needed, it seemed, because moments later Nick had a lapful of human. A warm, smiling human who hadn't hesitated a bit about straddling him. "I thought you'd never ask," Li purred, and Nick hummed in response as he carded his good hand through the man's dark hair. Then the human snickered when his hair was untied and allowed to fall around his face.

"Not half bad," Nick mumbled. "Anyone ever let you know you've got the kinda face that's easy to fall for?"

"Maybe once or twice. Mostly in my youth." The man leaned into Nick's touch like a cat when that hand wandered, the rough old synthetic skin of Nick's thumb brushing his cheek. His bravado faltered then, giving way to something softer underneath as he gripped the back of the pew on either side of Nick's shoulders.

When they kissed, it felt natural. Nick wasn't sure who initiated it; it was more like they fell together, with Li finally letting himself crumble and Nick being there to catch him. Soft hands moved from the pew to cup Nick's jaw and neck, mindful of the exposed wires, which freed his own to work at the straps and fastenings of Li's combat armor. There was no awkwardness, no hesitation as Nick stripped his human down, and even less still when Li went for the buttons of Nick's coat. The armor was peeled away bit by bit, each piece falling to the floor after Nick had removed it with a heavy _thunk_.

And when even breathing through his nose didn't get him enough air, the way Li tipped his head back as he gasped for breath gave Nick an excellent opportunity to lean forward and suck on his tanned, exposed neck-- earning a sound that was just about music to Nick's ears while the man's hands fisted in his trenchcoat. "You _ass_ ," Li huffed. "I'm going to have to steal your coat to hide that one."

"So long as you don't take the hat while you're at it," the synth replied, going for the flannel shirt next. It didn't need to come off, but he'd rather it be at least unbuttoned; gave his right hand something to do later, something to touch that wouldn't lead to pinching or bruising or general discomfort. Because his left was soon busy Li's faded jeans, smoothing over the strained fabric and earning a soft hiss, and goddamn if the way the man bit his lip when Nick went for the fastenings wasn't perfect.

Blasphemy or not, he felt like he should thank every deity that might exist for his flawless memory right about then. Especially when Li sagged against him, exhaling into the detective's neck and making him feel dangerously overheated. Especially as he marvelled at the novelty of sensation and sensor data in tandem when his his hand wrapped around the man's cock, with Li rocking into him and shuddering. Especially when it hit Nick that this was his, that it had nothing to do with the Institute or the real Nick Valentine, that Li was trusting _him_ instead of any number of people who would probably be better suited.

His voice was rougher when he spoke again, lowered to a murmur that was just between them as he snuck his right hand under Li's shirt, tracing his ribs. "This good enough for you?"

Li arched into Nick's metal hand, chuckling breathlessly; he lifted his head just enough for their eyes to meet, inches apart. "More than enough." Nick could feel the heat from his breath when he spoke, detecting the brief shift in humidity with each puff of air.

And it was all for an old robot that had been thrown out in the trash. All Nick's. "God, you're beautiful," he said. "We get back to the office, I'll have to give Ellie a day off so we can really take our time. Get creative in a more comfortable setting." He smirked as he felt Li shiver and twitch against him. "Sound good, sweetheart?"

"Sounds fantastic," Li sighed, letting his head fall back into the crook of the detective's neck. "I have some, ah, ideas myself. Might involve a taser."

That was a new one. "Uh-huh."

"Nothing dangerous. I'd be careful." Nick had to smirk at how the usually verbose Li Xiao had been reduced to such short, clipped sentences by a simple handjob. Also had to wonder how much it would take to rob the man of words entirely. That would be something to find out. "We'd have to, _mmh_ , establish safewords. You know. Probably will anyway, of course."

"Got a few ideas that'd make that kinda thing necessary?"

"Ohhh yes. Just, just a few." Another ragged laugh, followed by a groan. "God, Nick, the things I'd do to you if I could."

"What kinda things are we talkin' here?" Nick mumbled, his right hand tracing the lines of scar tissue hidden by Li's shirt. He knew it was there; he'd seen it before, knew where it began and ended, knew where the sensitive edges of it were.

Between that and the hand down his pants, Li seemed to have hard time remaining coherent. But damn did he try. "I-- I'd strip you down, nothing but your hat," he said between gasps. "Bind your hands, blindfold you. You'd look good like that, I-I think. Spread out over your desk. A leg over my shoulder while I worked you open with, _a-ah_ , with a vibrator o-or maybe beads--" The man bubbled up with a laugh that was followed by a shudder, a full-body sort of thing that rolled up the length of his spine. "A-and that'd just be the appetizer."

Nick chuckled, smirking to himself. "This your way of giving me tips, sweetheart?"

Somewhere between that statement and the little twist Nick added to the movement of his left hand, Li finally came undone - tipped over the edge with a choked sound and a whisper of _oh God, Nick_ that called his atheism into question as he spilled over the synth's fingers - all while Nick committed every detail of the moment to memory. Every last scrap of auditory and visual and sensory input, all tucked away for later.

In the aftermath, Li kissed him again; a surprisingly soft, tender thing given what they'd just done. Nick had the sneaking suspicion that he was being wordlessly thanked.

"You know," Li began, sweat causing his hair to cling to his face, "In hindsight, it probably would have been better to wait until we'd found a place that had a working shower somewhere within a three mile radius."

At that, Nick just snorted. "I coulda told you that."

Rolling his eyes, Li responded to that by stealing one of Nick's cigarettes from inside his jacket. And Nick figured that was only fair.

 


	6. tell your world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Human hearts can be swayed by the damnedest things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing's started to grow a plot. Like some kind of tumor or something. It didn't have a plot at the beginning, I swear. It just kinda GREW one.
> 
> Hope y'all don't mind.

Funny thing, empathy. Hard to define. Usually the only sure thing was when someone didn't have enough of it. For instance, Li Xiao had a helluva lot less than most folks normally did; the man always tried doing the thing that would make people like him the most, not the thing that was the most logical or morally sound. So when H2-22 came to them looking every bit the broken bird and engaging what little empathy Li had, it actually ended up coming as a shock.

At least, it shocked Li. It didn't surprise Nick in the slightest, since he'd long ago come to terms with the conclusion that synths were just the latest target for the human tendency to treat anyone not-them with contempt or fetishization at best and outright fear and hatred at worst. What with Li having lived through that kinda treatment, it made sense that seeing what it had done to someone else would be the thing to finally get to him. Nick watched the shift in the man's demeanor as it happened, could see the fire in Li's eyes as he took H2-22 by the shoulders and promised the terrified synth that he was safe.

Meanwhile, H2-22 had looked and sounded like he was about to cry.

After they'd escorted the synth to the safehouse, Li had taken Nick's good hand for a moment and squeezed it. He was shaking - almost imperceptibly so, but Nick's sensors still registered it - and the look on his face told Nick that in his head he was somewhere else entirely.

"I have to help these people, Nick," he'd said.

And Nick smiled sadly, grasping his partner's hand tightly in turn. "I'm right with ya, sweetheart."

That was all that needed to be said on the matter.

\---

The next few days were spent doing all those Minutemen things that Li had been putting off because he wasn't all that great with responsibility. Checking on settlements, fixing up sentry turrets that had broken down or been smacked a few too many times with baseball bats. That sort of thing. Nick didn't miss the opportunity to note how good Li was with the turrets, asking if there was any machine the man couldn't charm. His partner had gotten a laugh out of it, at least.

If anyone noticed that their General spent his nights curled up against Nick's chest in a shared bunk, they sure as hell didn't mention it. Good on them. Li had been in the kind of mood lately that could easily lead to an outburst, and that kinda thing didn't need to be directed at his own damn settlers just because some poor idiot who didn't know better decided to call Nick a "thing" or an "it".

Preston Garvey was elated to see them at the Castle when they got there. The mirelurk carcasses were gone, and the rubble had been cleared for the most part. Walls were still a mess, but Nick figured that the dozen or so laser turrets lining what remained of the ramparts made up for it.

"And there've been no more problems with super mutants since the artillery went up?" Li asked.

"Nothing we haven't been able to handle, General," Preston replied.

Li smiled then. It was the kind of smile that said he had a plan going through that pretty head of his. "Good," he said. "Now, if it's all the same to you, I'm going to make sure the sleeping arrangements are adequate. Never know when we're going to get an influx of transients."

Preston nodded like he understood even though Nick was pretty sure he didn't; the man was as innocent as a goddamn Disney character, and the sort of madcap plotting that Li usually did tended to go completely over his head.

It wasn't until he was out of earshot that Nick spoke up. "Influx of transients, huh?" the detective mused.

"Well, we do need safehouses," Li said with a shrug. Nick snorted at that, causing his partner to look up at him with a frown. "What?"

"Safehouses are usually a bit more subtle, sweetheart."

"It's well-defended, hard to get to, could withstand a siege--" Li got downright pouty when all Nick had to do to refute that was look over his shoulder and point at the big Brotherhood of Steel balloon in the distance. "All right, _fine_ , so not entirely safe from every faction that may want to do do our mutual friends harm, but still! It has to be better than nothing at all."

"Not necessarily. How easy would it be for an Institute spy to get in here without anybody noticing? We ain't exactly gonna win over the settlers to the cause at the drop of a hat, here. And even if we do it'll mean that word's gonna get around quick."

"So what would you suggest?"

"Well, don't involve the settlers or the Minutemen, for one," Nick said. "Not unless you have to. Lotta these folks're scared'a synths on principle, and they're twice as scared of the Institute. Ain't gonna do something that's blatantly against the Institute unless it gets personal, and frankly I don't blame 'em."

"But the--" Li stopped himself before he even got out the first syllable of the word _Railroad_ , lowering his voice self-consciously after casting a nervous glance at the Castle courtyard. "But our friends don't have the resources to do anything further on their own," he said. "The Minutemen have more than enough."

"Which means that you've got more than enough, since you're the General." Fishing around in his pockets, Nick pulled out his pack of cigarettes to tap one out when fumbling for one revealed that the pack was too close to empty for easy retrieval. "But manpower, that's a different story. Can't just recruit any random johnny off the street when it comes to building secret bases for a secret organization."

Li whined then, his shoulders slumping. "What's the use of having power at all if I can't abuse it for the sake of people I like?"

Nick simply chuckled; he probably shouldn't have found that half as endearing as he did. Never one to be idle for long, no sooner had Li stopped to think about things before he was fidgeting again, eventually pulling out his pip-boy and bringing up a map.

"What about Sunshine Tidings?" he asked.

"Ain't that the place with the big 'Free The Robots' sign and the blitzed Handy?"

"Mm. It's not subtle either, but I feel like an appeal to audacity might be the best approach in this case." Nodding to himself, Li tapped his map to mark it accordingly. "There. That's one possibility. Bit out of the way though. Should find something that's more of a central location."

Nick shrugged. It wasn't quite his area of expertise; he only remembered the places he'd been with the man as far as recent possibilities went. His own travels across the Commonwealth were stretched over the course of about fifty-plus years, so the info was less than reliable. "Just so long as you remember to run it by somebody with more intel than you before you go all hog-wild over an idea that turns out to be less than solid."

"So, Deacon then."

"Your call, sweetheart. I'm followin' your lead."

It was a bit of a surprise when Li stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "You're still my voice of reason on this, you know," the human said. "Don't sell yourself short."

And if Nick could've blushed, he would've.

 


	7. world's end dancehall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new challenger appears!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God that summary is so cheesy and I can't resist it. 
> 
> This fic has officially grown a plot. I don't know how. It just did. If anything that's mentioned makes you go "is that who I think it is", then yes. It probably is exactly who you're thinking of.

Of course they stopped off in Diamond City along the way, and of course that led to its own set of distractions as Nick made good on his promise to close the office. Nick was nothing if not a man of his word, and Li wasn't about to complain about wasting a day inside after several days of traipsing about the ruins of Boston.

And if Ellie had gotten to the office even five minutes earlier she would've caught her employer with his partner's legs up over his shoulders as the two of them tested Nick's lack of a gag reflex. She was very, very lucky she only caught the aftermath of that (which still involved Li splayed bonelessly over the desk and snickering to himself while Nick leaned over him with an elbow planted on either side of the man, the pair of them sharing a cigarette). It was far less traumatic than the alternative would've been.

"Ohmigod I'm so sorry, I'll come back--" she stammered.

Nick straightened with the usual audible creaking of joints. "No, no need, just hold on a minute," he said, fixing the buttons of his shirt. When Li didn't seem inclined to do more than lean his head back onto the desk with a _thump_ and continue chuckling, Nick tapped the man on the knee with his metal hand. "C'mon, sweetheart. Time to get presentable. There's a lady in the room."

Li waved off Nick's concern, not bothering to move just yet; Nick found it hard to tear his eyes away from the picture he was being presented with, but he managed. "Ellie, my dear," his partner began, "you have the worst timing."

"Please just put some pants on, okay?" Ellie was absolutely refusing to look. "I should have knocked. Should've just. Knocked on the door. Should've known you two were up to something, but nooo, I had to just blunder in--"

"What made you decide to come in the first place?" Nick asked as he tucked his shirt in. "Told you to take the day off."

"There's a, a woman in the market. She's--" The young woman glanced behind her and immediately regretted it, settling on talking to the door instead. "--she's asking about a vault dweller. Says it's important, but won't say why."

Li rolled his eyes as he finally eased himself up onto his elbows. "Tell her I'm busy."

" _You_ tell her," Ellie said with a huff. "I couldn't get a word in edgewise. Piper heard the words 'vault dweller' and whisked her right over to Power Noodles for a chat."

Ah, Piper. Nick let out a long, tired sigh and put out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray; Li pouted as if he mourned the loss. "I'd trust Piper to be able to sniff out a story if nothing else," he said. Even if that tendency was likely to get the girl shot one of these days. "Thanks for the tip, Ellie."

"She's trying to get back at me for that interview I owe her," Li grumbled. "I just know it."

"Your fault for putting it off," Nick responded, and Li blew a raspberry at him.

\---

By the time they got there - after they'd cleaned themselves and the desk up, after they'd gotten dressed, after Ellie had mumbled that she deserved a raise and Li had promised her that her next trip to buy clothes was on him - Power Noodles was occupied only by the locals and Takahashi. So with the knowledge that Piper was involved, the pair headed over to Publick Occurrances next. And inside, the room was filled with laughter.

"You rode the eyebot!" Piper crowed, grinning from ear to ear.

"What was I supposed to do with a busted ankle? Ain't like Veronica can carry my ass when I've got a busted ankle," an unfamiliar voice said. The owner of the voice was a little shorter than Piper, with bright red hair tied back in a loose ponytail. Her skin was heavily dusted with freckles, and she was wearing a Brotherhood of Steel jumpsuit that had been freed from the burden of having sleeves, possibly with a pair of scissors to aid in said liberation. She, too, was grinning. "So there I was, perched on a flyin' robot with a shotgun, and there Veronica was with her dress an' her power fist--"

That was about the point where Piper noticed her other visitors. She craned her neck to beam them. "Hey Blue! I got someone you might wanna meet."

"What am I, chopped mirelurk?" Nick teased.

Piper rolled her eyes. "Well for once it's not you people are looking for, Nicky."

The stranger had turned in her seat to peer at the odd pair, her green eyes lingering on Nick as her jaw went slack. "Hot damn, do you ever look like shit," she drawled. Nick responded with a nod and a tip of his hat, leaning against the doorframe.

"Nick, Li, this is Lancer Cassidy. Cass, this is Nick Valentine and Li Xiao." Piper gestured to each in turn from her spot on the couch. "Please refrain from killing each other. I'm not looking to hafta clean the upholstery."

Li bowed his head and smiled. "A pleasure, miss Cassidy. Although I believe I've already told the Brotherhood of Steel once that I'm not interested in joining."

The woman laughed at that; it made the faint creases of age on her face that much more prominent, emphasizing the crows' feet and dimpling her cheeks. "Shit, tiny. You think the Brotherhood gives a mutie's warty ass about that? Y'think they'd send somebody like me?"

"I don't know. The last person who tried to recruit me wasn't exactly the embodiment of competence." The woman gave him a withering look and he added, "--no offense. It's just that Paladin Danse was hardly recruitment officer material."

"Uh-huh." Cassidy didn't seem convinced. "Well I'm not here on behalf of the Brotherhood either way. Lucky for you, since they don't usually take too kindly to, y'know..." She gestured at Nick. "Robots."

Nick didn't miss his partner's thin, mirthless smile. "I'm well aware," Li said. "But if you're not here to convert me to the gospel of Steel, then what _are_ you here for? Who sent you?"

The woman leaned back against the couch, heaving a sigh as she shifted so that one leg was crossed over the other. "You're the vault dweller, right?"

"I am," Li conceded. "What's this about?"

"An old courier friend'a mine wants to meet you," she said. "Say, you got a geiger counter?"

 


	8. gossip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ain't that a blast from the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The context for this one is in my other fics. I'll understand if the massive fucking crossover turns some people off, however. 
> 
> Once again, got help on the chinese. Not sure I used the right symbols though, my friend's better with pinyin and I had to reference the internet for the rest. Technically Li just said "foreigners" but contextually he basically means "white people". Hark only acknowledged him, basically he said "yes?"

"Gotta admit, Six didn't let on all that much," Cassidy said as she led the way out of Diamond City, gesturing flippantly with the hand that wasn't on her shotgun; Piper trailed closely behind her, while Li and Nick brought up the rear. "Not that I think he knows that much either. He gets all tense when he doesn't have all the answers."

"How did he know to come to us?" Li asked.

The woman chuckled. "Figured the general of the local militia would have some idea as to what the hell's goin' on. An' hey, he ain't wrong, right?"

Nick scoffed quietly. "Still going out on a limb to make assumptions about where our allegiances lie."

"Nnnoooot really, actually," Piper said. "You know keeping secrets in Diamond City is like tryin'a keep a deathclaw in a doghouse, Nick. Once Travis got ahold of it--"

"Ah, hell."

"Ayup. Just," there, Piper made a popping sound with her mouth, "like a water balloon. It's everywhere now, Blue. The cat is officially out of the bag."

Li let out a long, tired sigh. "I need to listen to the radio more, don't I?"

"Probably." The reporter's grin was a smug one. "But I bet it'd clear things right up if you'd just gimme that interview."

"Not happening," Li answered immediately.

It got a hoot of laughter out of Piper. "Never change, Blue."

The humans kept chatting idly as they walked, and Nick was easily able to tune them out. "Six", huh? Strange moniker. Sounded more like a title or codename than anything, which fit the Railroad MO. So did the secrecy. But secrecy fit the Institute too, even if they were more hamfisted about making sure their secrets were kept; the Railroad relied on subtlety. If this Six fella had gotten ahold of the code phrase for the Railroad and was with the Institute, then the Railroad needed to know how badly they were compromised.

If he was an estranged member of the Railroad trying to come back into the fold, though, that was a different story. The Railroad could use any intel on the Brotherhood they could get. Considering what Nick had seen of the Brotherhood so far, it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to say they wouldn't get on too well with the Railroad ideology. And with the Brotherhood being more militaristic, Nick figured it wasn't too much of a stretch to say that anything they didn't like would get smashed all to hell. Intel on troop movements would give the Railroad a better chance of keeping their packages away from overzealous patrols.

It was one helluva political snarl, to say the least. The world just couldn't give Li a break, could it?

"So what's the story with this Six character?" Nick found himself asking.

Cassidy just laughed. "Not so bad, once you get to know 'im. You'll see when we get there."

At least she was being consistent with telling them absolutely jack shit.

\---

Their destination, it seemed, was an old boathouse. Outside there was a woman with short, dark hair and Brotherhood fatigues standing over the workbench by the side of the house, and a leggy, bespectacled man in a button-down shirt and slacks parked in a patio chair on the front porch with a plasma pistol in his lap.

When they crested the final hill on approach, their guide broke into a jog, then an all-out sprint. The dark-haired woman turned just in time to see Cassidy cross the broken old road; the unknown woman gasped and dropped her tools for the sake of running over to greet Cassidy with a fierce hug that lifted her off her feet.

"You're back!" the dark-haired one squeaked. Casting a glance over Cassidy's shoulder as she put the redhead down, she added "--and you brought friends!"

"Yep." Cassidy beamed up at her proudly. "Didja get my still set up?"

"Oh, you can go a day without booze," she huffed, turning to the group of newcomers to appraise them. She didn't even flinch at the sight of a Gen 2; Nick took that as a good sign. "Heya! I'm Veronica. Well, Scribe Santangelo, if you wanna get fancy."

Li smiled and looked like he was about to say something, but Piper butted in and came forward to shake Veronica's hand; Veronica was perplexed, but didn't shy away. "Piper Wright. These are my associates, Nick Valentine and Li Xiao."

"A pleasure, Miss Santangelo," Nick drawled with a tip of his hat. At his side, Li offered a sweeping bow.

Veronica giggled. "Jeez, everybody's so formal. I feel like I should be all dressed up or something."

The man on the porch chose that moment to speak up. "Arcade Gannon, if anyone's wondering," he said. "Was anyone going to mention that the fellow with a hat looks distinctly robotic, or is this the proverbial elephant in the room that we're all going to avoid talking about?"

"The fella with a hat can hear you, jackass," Nick replied.

"Oh, don't mind me then." Having put his foot in his mouth, the man on the porch took to fidgeting with his plasma pistol to make himself look suitably busy. "I'll just go back to being a bit of scenery that occasionally shoots at birds. Six says they're listening, you know."

Cassidy rolled her eyes. "C'mon, they're birds."

"Actually, we kinda shot one down earlier," Veronica said sheepishly. "It was full of wires and stuff."

Li shot Nick a horrified look, but Piper gawked openly. "Jesus, seriously?"

The scribe nodded quickly. "Yeah! Apparently they're all, y'know... Institute-y."

All of it was starting to sound to Nick like it was too good to be true. This guy knew an awful lot, didn't he? With a guy like that blabbing all their secrets everywhere, it was a miracle the poor bastard wasn't dead or replaced. "Just how does this Six fella we keep hearing about know so much about the Institute?" he asked.

Veronica's head jerked up, as did Arcade's; the latter's expression wasn't as apparent behind the glare hitting his glasses, but Veronica's nervous smile spoke volumes. "I-it's a long story," she stammered.

"As much as we'd _love_ to trust complete strangers who have been giving us the runaround all day," Li cut in, "we'll need a little more to go on than that." Nick wasn't sure whether he meant the three of them or the Railroad. Hell, maybe he just meant himself. Mentions of the Institute had certainly gotten the man's ears perked. "I, for one, would like to see for myself what sort of person he is before I pass judgment."

"And you'll get to," a voice said from inside the house. Piper gasped. Nick's eyebrows lifted. And Li's hand was poised to draw his laser pistol.

A man stood in the boathouse doorway, tall and broad and bronze-haired. His damn near perfectly symmetrical features were clean-shaven; he was the kinda guy you'd see in a pre-war ad, with a pretty face that never quite seemed to get the whole smiling thing right. The old navy trenchcoat with the upturned collar just served to make him look that much more cold and intimidating.

Li sighed, shaking his head slowly. “外國人，” he grumbled.

“是是？” the stranger answered, smiling that not-quite-smile. And Li stopped dead in his tracks to gawk at him.

"You speak Mandarin?"

"Translation software's pretty standard, even if it's got some cobwebs from disuse in my case," the man said. Nick caught the hint almost immediately; this guy was a synth. "Don't make me bring it out too often, I'd rather not rely on it if I don't have to. I'm told my grammar is 'piss-poor' by the standards of native speakers."

"I'll try not to judge, then. Not that it'd even be my place to do so. I think my own uniquely childish interpretations probably have my ancestors rolling in their graves." Li was grinning as he walked up to the house, nervousness forgotten. He held out his hand for a handshake, and the stranger clasped it firmly. "Xiao Li-tzu, the vault-dwelling bicentennial popsicle. Most call me Li."

"A3-21," the synth replied, "Courier Six of the Mojave Express. People call me Harkness."

Piper clapped her hands over her mouth to suppress her squeak of excitement; all Nick could do was stare. That name-- it'd come up while he'd been digging for the Mysterious Stranger, hadn't it? That courier that got shot in the head? He'd had always wondered how the guy had survived, but apparently he should've been wondering how the Mojave survived instead. He recognized that designation. Anyone who'd been in the know about ten years back would.

This fella was a Courser. "You wouldn't happen to have a geiger counter, would you?" Harkness asked Li casually.

"Sorry," Nick's partner said. "Mine's in the shop."

"Damn shame." Harkness looked almost relieved. "Well, you can come inside if you want. Veronica got the stove working, so it's warm enough if we stick to the kitchen."

Arcade chose that moment to speak up. "I vote that Cass takes a turn at birdwatching."

"Getting cold, Gannon?" Cass teased.

"Yes. Yes I am. And I feel like I'm starting to get a headache from the eye strain."

"Wuss."

"If you're trying to goad me into staying out here longer to prove my masculinity, it won't work."

"Just callin' it like I see it."

Somehow, Nick could see himself liking these people.


	9. children record

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back on track to something like a resolution. Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics of this song fit great, but fuck if it isn't a weird one to listen to. If you look it up, I suggest finding a cover instead of trying to sit through the original; IIRC the producer was under a lot of pressure and stress when he made it, so the tuning suffered considerably. 
> 
> Much dialogue, very blab. Hopefully not overwhelming. I wanna make sure the plot gets its footing and all the characters are established, 'cause it's important.

Inside, there were a half dozen assorted chairs situated around a table, along with a couple more that were slightly further off because they simply wouldn't fit. At least four of them looked so out of place that they had to've been scavenged from other parts of the boathouse; one was even an office chair, its old wheels prone to sqeaking.

Naturally, that's the one Nick took; Li found an equally loud and rickety metal folding chair that happened to be missing one of its rubber "feet", causing it to wobble whenever he leaned in just the right way. At the other end of the table, Harkness took a seat in a wooden dining room chair that creaked under his weight.

Harkness pulled the left sleeve of his coat up, revealing a pip-boy. An older model, too. It didn't look anything like Li's. "We've got some time to kill," the Courser said. "One last person's supposed to show up, but it'll be a while."

"That last person have anything to do with the ring on your left hand?" Li asked. Hell, Nick hadn't even noticed.

The Courser blinked, then smiled. "Yeah. He just might." His sleeve was tugged back down. "So. You two know anything about what happened to the Switchboard?"

"Compromised, along with a few safehouses," Nick told him; Harkness looked sharply at the detective, like he hadn't quite expected Nick to speak. So Nick kept right on talking. "Place was crawling with Institute synths, last we saw it. We cleared it out, but I doubt it stayed that way after we left."

Li nodded, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. "Deacon mentioned a... 'Courser blitz'?"

"Coursers are the Institute's heavies," Harkness said. "Gen 3 synths made and trained to hunt other synths, amongst other things. Anything a horde of Gen 1 and Gen 2 models can't take care of? That's where we came in."

"What do you mean, 'we'?" Li's brow furrowed. "You're a Courser?"

"Something like that." Nick could tell from the way the other synth's expression darkened that it was a sore subject. "Not anymore, though. These days I doubt they'd even try to recondition me. Not long after I was made, they phased out the human-form androids and started with synthetic organics. Just infiltration units at first, but soon enough even Coursers were being made with the same techniques."

Li let out a snort. "You'd think that they would stick with androids," he remarked. "Biotech is remarkably advanced in terms of data storage and transfer, but it's also incredibly delicate. It can heal, sure. With the right semiconductive materials one would think that the dermal layer could act as shielding from the elements to a limited degree while retaining its functionality and flexibility. But the limitations are the same as a human's, so I'm not sure I see a point."

"The limitations _are_ the point, sweetheart," Nick said gently. At Li's confusion, he sighed and continued, "--you make a smart robot, and it can overpower a human real quick. Bring it closer to human specs and you've got more options when it comes to keepin' it tame."

Harkness affirmed it with a grim, slow nod. "I'm not sure there's any androids left at the Institute. I sit on that awkward point between organic and synthetic. I bleed, I hurt, I can be slowed down - drawbacks compared to a Gen 2 - but if you piss me off I'm hard to put down with anything short of a mini-nuke or some sort of pulse weapon, which can't be said for a Gen 3."

"But you left before they could throw you out, didn't you?" Li prodded. "That's why you're looking for the Railroad. They helped you, and now that they're in trouble you want to return the favor. Is that right?"

"Among other things," Harkness conceded. "My contact was just a tourist. She didn't know the location of the new HQ. I'll understand if it's something you don't trust me with, or something that you don't have the authority to tell me, but if you could get ahold of someone who can get me to them--"

"Would anyone from the Railroad recognize you?" The fire in Li's eyes was the same as when they'd helped H2-22, Nick realized. "Deacon, perhaps? I could arrange a meeting."

"It'd be much appreciated." Relaxing somewhat, Harkness went to check his pip-boy again. "At any rate, my partner should be here any minute now," he said, heaving himself up out of his chair; it groaned like it was about to give way underneath him in spite of him putting a good deal of his weight on the table as he stood. "Shall we head back outside?"

"And here I was just getting comfortable." Li stretched as he stood, letting Harkness go first before he followed. Nick wasn't far behind, even though his joints protested having to move again just a few minutes after sitting down.

They got outside just in time to see the vertibird arrive.

Now, old Nick had seen vertibirds before the war. Even been up in one on a couple of occasions. But uh, those aerial drops that the military boys in power armor did? Never really been one for those. He'd always found them nervewracking to watch, even if he knew it was perfectly safe because of the power armor and told himself it was just something these kids liked to do.

One such power armored fella dropped from the vertibird, and true to form, Nick flinched out of some old forgotten reflex at the impact as it reverberated faintly through the ground beneath their feet. But Li? He just sighed.

"Oh, good. He's one of _those_."

And hell if that didn't help ease the tension some.

\---

New guy was Sentinel Ted Davies. He shook Nick's hand and grinned broadly without a hint of trepidation as he introduced himself and was introduced in turn to the three he didn't know; outside of the power armor, the Brotherhood of Steel uniform, bomber jacket, and plasma rifle did nothing to hide the fact that the guy was only about five foot six at most. He had a youthful sort of face, white hair, and not a drop of color in his transluscent-pale skin.

He had a pip-boy, too. Same model as the one Harkness wore, except the lights were green instead of yellow. Must've been how they communicated.

"Sorry I took so long," he said; he stepped up to give Harkness a quick peck on the cheek, and Harkness leaned in to make it easier like he was used to it. "Danse had a job that needed doing."

Harkness didn't seem surprised. "How's he doing? Suspect anything?"

"Not a damn thing. As far as he knows, I'm on super-secret deep-cover recon for Maxxie. Like, 'need-to-know basis and he just doesn't need to know' kinda deal." Ted's smirk came easily. "Dumb as a brick."

"Hold on-- Ted Davies?" Piper asked. "As in, _the_ Ted Davies? The Lone Wanderer?" She had taken a chair on the porch next to the one that Cass was in (with Veronica having draped herself over Cass's lap). Meanwhile, Arcade was leaned against a nearby wall; he'd found a coat and jammed his hands into the pockets of it to make up for how his wrists stuck out of the sleeves.

"The one and only," Ted replied, winking and giving her a salute. "I can show you my dogtags if you don't believe me."

Piper gave him a once-over. "Oh, you have _got_ to let me interview you."

"Can do. Hit me up later." Ted then looked to Harkness. "Got a sitrep for me, babe?"

Harkness nodded. "The Switchboard and several safehouses are compromised. Going to assume at this point that the Railroad will want us to start from square one."

Ted shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the new information. "If we can confirm there's no sensitive intel there for the Railroad to fuss over, then I can get the boys to clear it out."

"That'd be something to ask the Railroad about, not us," Nick said. "More to the point, if you're Brotherhood, then why're you helping us? Ain't it against your code of ethics or something?"

"Hah! The Brotherhood give me titles just to shut me up at this point. I think they're hoping that I'll just quietly stop existing before I can get into another shouting match with the leadership. Who, by the way - and you can quote me on this, miss Wright," Ted threw that in as an aside to the reporter, who looked downright gleeful, "- is just this side of twenty years old and doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. I'm pretty sure he grew the beard to hide the fact that he still has zits, the little prick."

"All true!" Veronica called out. "I can vouch. We got to DC just before the beard became a thing."

Piper let out a snorting giggle and kicked her feet out. "This is great. You guys are giving me more material today than I've had in weeks, seriously."

The banter continued for a while - Arcade and Cass both chimed in with their greetings, and Piper certainly didn't lack for things to chat about - and little of interest happened. Nick chuckled as he listened, leaning back against the nearest wall and pulling out a cigarette along with his lighter. These kids, they weren't half bad. Seemed like they wanted to do good in the world. Judging by how they treated their buddy Harkness (and Nick himself), they didn't mind synths either.

Teddy in particular, if Nick had read things right. Took a certain type to shack up with a synth, particularly a Courser. Maybe it was a vault dweller thing, something about pre-war values. Nick would have to give it a good long think later. Right then, there was something else that was on his mind.

Because Li hadn't said a word since the new kid had showed up. Downright unnerving, considering how chatty the man usually was. So Nick edged closer to where his partner stood in the doorway. "You alright there, sweetheart?" Nick said, his voice low. "I can practically see the smoke comin' out'cher ears."

Li hummed, shifting so that his head rested on Nick's shoulder. Awful nonchalant, considering they were in the company of strangers, but Nick didn't mind being a leaning post (nor did Li protest when Nick decided to throw an arm around his shoulders for the hell of it in turn). "Just thinking," he mumbled in response, before raising his voice to speak to the group. "Harkness, you remember things about the Institute, don't you?" he asked.

Harkness blinked; the way he cocked his head reminded Nick vaguely of a large dog. "Some things, yes," he answered carefully. "Why?"

"Could you get me in?"

The Courser froze. So did Teddy. "I'm... No. Not anymore. Even if I were able to, they've probably changed things since I was there last."

"The fuck do you want to get into the Institute for?" The Lone Wanderer was much less tactful, openly disapproving of the idea. Or maybe just openly disapproving of using Harkness for it; Nick didn't miss the way Teddy took a step closer to the android, protective and distrustful all at once. Nor did he miss how, for just a second, Harkness looked afraid.

Li was smaller and less imposing than both of them, but he wasn't intimidated in the slightest. "They have my son," he said. "They took him when he was an infant. I don't know how much time has passed since then - I doubt he'll recognize me - but I still need to reach him. That's one of the reasons why I went to the Railroad in the first place."

Both Teddy and Harkness deflated, the fight going out of them. "One of the reasons," the Lone Wanderer echoed. "Is, uh... Is Valentine here another one of your reasons?"

"Yes," Li admitted. Nick felt a twinge of... of _something_. He couldn't say what, exactly. Only that it was like a puzzle piece had fallen into place in his head, the dots lining up so that he had confirmation of a pattern that he'd suspected was there from the start. He held onto Li a little tighter, ducking his head so that the brim of his hat might hide his expression somewhat, because _hell_. Li cared enough to admit it to strangers.

"Jesus." Teddy chewed his lip for a minute. "Alright, we'll figure something out. Got any other leads?"

"We have part of a dead mercenary's brain on ice, along with some cybernetics," Li replied. "Whatever's in it is encrypted. Standard Institute procedure, I'm told."

Teddy craned his neck to peer up at the Courser. "Think you can crack it?"

"Probably," Harkness said. "Institute encryption is fairly straightforward once you're used to it."

"Then that settles it. First order of business after some lunch, decode a dead merc's brain." Teddy turned to Li with a toothy, crooked grin. "Sound like a plan?"

It did indeed.

 


	10. night tales deceive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had a fever for like three days
> 
> my voice is gone
> 
> have a chapter where ted acts like a little shit

Lunch was handled by Harkness for the most part. "Ted's not allowed to cook anymore," the former Courser told Nick as he stirred what looked to be a pot of stew. Beef, brahmin butter, and seasonings from an overgrown herb garden out back had been added in carefully measured amounts, something that most folks didn't bother with anymore. "On the rare occasion when the result manages to be edible, it's never particularly pleasant."

"Ain't he supposed to be the Lone Wanderer?" Nick wondered aloud, leaned against a nearby wall and watching. Harkness's techniques had something of the old world about them, like an art lost to time. Made Nick wonder just where the guy had picked it up. "A title like that, you'd think he could throw together his own meals."

Harkness chuckled. It sounded real, nothing like the false smiles and carefully cultivated politeness of when they'd first been introduced. "Wasn't really enough left in DC in the way of edible things to bother with. Folks who had their own gardens were scarce, and most food that was scavenged was either prepackaged, irradiated, or both."

"Sounds like a helluva place to make a living."

"It was." Harkness leaned over his pot of bubbling something-or-other to take a good long whiff of it. Nodding to himself once, he pulled the old ladle out of the pot and tapped it against the edge once so that it wouldn't drip on the way to the cracked saucer he was using to keep it off of the bare countertop. "Seems ready to me. Let's call everyone in."

Within ten minutes, the whole group had crowded around the table, each with their own bent spoon and mismatched bowl filled with thick, piping hot stew (except for Nick; he didn't ask, and Harkness knew better than to offer). As it turned out, Piper got on well with Cass and Veronica, and was once again in an animated discussion with the pair of them about whatever dirt she could get on the Brotherhood. She'd even gone so far as to get out a notepad and a pencil. Arcade occasionally chimed in with details about the much older west coast Brotherhood's fights with both the NCR and the long-dead Enclave, but Piper found his contributions far less interesting.

As for the two Vaulties, well. They got along... to an extent.

"I am totally Asian," Teddy insisted. "My dad was Korean."

Li huffed. "Do you speak Korean?"

"No?"

"Then you're not Asian. You're American. You've even got an American sort of nose."

"If I dyed my hair black, would you believe me?"

"It's not that I don't believe you," Li said, frowning in clear disapproval, "I'm just disagreeing with your statement that we're somehow inherently the same."

Teddy's expression pinched up with distaste; he turned his head to look over at Nick skeptically. "Is he always like this?"

"Like what?" Li asked, bristling.

The detective shrugged. "Can't blame him for bein' defensive."

"I'm not defensive," Nick's partner protested. "And even if I were, it isn't like white bread over here would understand why." He gestured to Teddy with his spoon.

A laugh bubbled up out of the younger Vaultie. "Hah! Now that's a new one. White bread, pff."

"Better than 'snowflake'?" Harkness suggested. To Li, he added "--don't worry too much about him. He's just trying to get a reaction out of you."

"I could tell from the random fits of giggling and the smug grin," Li grumbled. "You know, I thought two hundred years in a fridge would give the world time to forget that I was Chinese, but no. First Danse asks if I'm a communist, and now this."

Teddy groaned, smacking his palm against his forehead. "Christ, Danse. Seriously?"

"Oh, yes. I'm not even sure he knows what the word means. Only that it's evil." Li scoffed quietly. "A true American if I've ever seen one."

To Nick, Teddy's sage nod had all the makings of a truce. A truce that lasted right up to the point where Teddy picked up his bowl to slurp noisily at the last remnants of his stew and Li looked like it took all of his self-control to keep from lecturing the kid.

Well. At least they'd found some common ground.

\---

The trip to Goodneighbor was prefaced by Teddy getting up on a table.

"Alright, listen up folks," he began, addressing the room at large. "From this point on, we all need to think of ourselves as being at risk from the Institute. Everybody in this room is effectively a target, whether they were before or not. This means that from now on, nobody gets to be alone. Not me, not Hark, not anybody. You go somewhere? You have a buddy with you. You take a piss break? Be within shouting distance of somebody. You go to sleep? Sleep in the same room as someone you know."

Harkness spoke up next. "The only way to be safe is to be vigilant," he said. "And if you suspect that anyone you know is an Institute duplicate, be careful around them. In particular, don't lash out. Find a way to let me know instead, and I'll try to talk to them and bring them to our side if doing so seems like a viable option."

Teddy grinned down at his android from up on the table and indicated him by jabbing a thumb in his direction. "What he said."

It was idealistic as all hell. Damn near impossible to pull off. That level of care... Nick had to wonder how these kids thought they were going to get away with it without getting dead at the hands of the Institute, or being lynched by the locals.

But, _God_. Everybody in that room either believed them or clearly wanted to. That somehow these two kids with their idealism and good intentions could do the right thing. Even Nick couldn't help but root for 'em, in spite of knowing that the world wouldn't take kindly to their views and knowing that they'd just get hurt.

If they'd only been allies - humans without a real stake in the fight - then they would be safer. Veronica, Cass, Arcade, Piper-- the only danger they were in was from the Institute. They could still be hurt, but your average Commonwealth civillian wouldn't give two shits about their pro-synth opinions. Piper in particular was a great example. Teddy, though... Well. A guy doesn't just knowingly marry a synth without fully accepting kind of shitstorm they're gonna be in for. Not without being the kind of reprehensible person who only looked to take advantage, at least (and Teddy sure wasn't that). He'd taken up the responsibility of not being just an ally anymore, a lot like Li had.

As for Nick, he had to admit that he was getting kinda tired of being "one of the good ones".

Piper didn't come with them to Goodneighbor, heading back to Diamond City instead to check on her sister. Veronica and Cass went with her to watch her back, in spite of her insistance that she didn't need it. As such, the party ended up consisting of Harkness, Teddy, Li, Arcade, and Nick himself-- and Arcade had only come along because he wasn't allowed to stay at the house by himself, much to his annoyance.

Harkness led the pack. It didn't surprise Nick all that much when the other synth happened to know the way. Teddy clanked along cheerfully in his power armor, chatting about everything and nothing to his android seemingly out of some desire to get the guy to laugh (which actually worked, shockingly). Nick came up a few meters behind them, with Li sticking to his side like glue; Arcade brought up the rear and spent most of the journey looking distinctly bored.

The trip was a far cry from the one Nick had made with Li at his side previously. Didn't take half as long either; Teddy in his power armor made stealth impossible, yet somehow the added danger wasn't a problem for five people who carried a heavy magnum, a plasma rifle, a plasma _pistol_ , a laser pistol, and a small-caliber revolver between them. Nothing got even remotely close to them.

"So!" Arcade said as they got in the front gate, clapping his hands together. "This is Goodneighbor, is it? I like it. I especially like the assaultron who apparently runs a business. Not threatening at all."

Li craned his neck to pout at the tall doctor. "Be nice to Kleo."

"Oh, I will," Arcade assured. "If only because I'm worried that it might reduce me to a smear on the ground if I don't."

" _She_ ," Li corrected.

"That _she'll_ reduce me to a smear, then." As much as he acted inconvenienced by it, Arcade didn't really seem to mind. Nick made a mental note of that and added it to the rather impressive pile of mental notes he'd managed to amass over the course of the day. "I see there's also a not-insignificant ghoul population. Good on whoever runs this place."

Nick chuckled. "You'll get a kick outta meeting the mayor. He's a ghoul too."

"Well shit, I like him already," Teddy said, his voice made tinny by his helmet. "Now where's this Memory Den place? I wanna watch Hark decrypt things. Makes me all tingly when he does it."

"Ted," Harkness said, exasperated, "there's such a thing as oversharing."

"Babe, have you ever known me to be anything but a perpetual source of gleefully supplied TMI?"

Nick had to wonder just how that relationship had managed to last for ten years.

 


	11. wanderlast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I give up on summaries. My head is full of cotton fluff. Here is the chapter where I dispel a bunch of really weird not-canon headcanons that have popped up and caused anciliary headcanons to pop up in their wake that make even less sense. I am still sick and I apologize if this chapter is about as coherent as a sedated five year old with a mouthful of candied yam, but I just. REALLY WANT TO GET THE PLOT GOING, Y'KNOW?
> 
> next chapter might have smut if I can be assed, but if it does it will probably be full of the feels. btw, chapter title is more general this time. I'll put more effort into the next one I promise.

A half hour later, Nick and Teddy were in the basement of the Memory Den with Doctor Amari, crowded around a single small monochrome monitor that displayed what was going on-- and their tour of a dead merc's brain was being guided along by Li and Harkness in the memory loungers.

Amari had a microphone set up to be able to talk to the pair, and Li in particular.

"Open mic or push-to-talk?" Teddy asked.

"The latter," Amari replied.

"Nice!" Clapping his hands together, Teddy scooted his chair forward to peer closely at the screen.

He had to squint, Nick realized. Kid was nearsighted, wasn't he? Explained the reliance on the power armor somewhat; everything came through the HUD, and his vision ended up not mattering so much.

Something to think about. Later, anyway. Right then they had a brain to pick through.

The first memory was blurred in some places, sharp in others. Certain details were vague and fuzzy, while others - names on comic books, the patches on the bedsheets, the fraying edges of a stuffed animal's seams - were clear as day. Teddy saw it and hummed thoughtfully.

"Must be an old one," Nick mumbled. "Real old. Look at the perspective. That's a kid's point of view, right there."

The sound quality was muddy, but there were voices to be made out. A woman's, tinged with bitterness. A man's, tinny as it came in over the radio. Kellogg's own, not yet matured or roughened by years of cigarettes and damage.

Somewhere in the noise, Teddy heard something that made him sit up a little straighter. "Hold up," he said. "Can you pause this and play back what we just saw?"

"Right now it's a live feed," Amari said. "I'm recording it to review afterward, but I would rather not lose track of what might be going on for the time being. Why?"

"The radio. It mentioned-- shit, that can't be right." Teddy frowned deeply and leaned forward as the memory continued, the woman talking to Kellogg about teachers and school being useless. "Nick, did you catch that bit about the NCR?"

"'All five states have signed on'," Nick repeated. "What's your point?"

"My point is that this memory is from _2189_ ," the kid explained, gesturing to the screen. "This can't be legit. It's impossible."

Nick leaned back in his chair, staring as the memory played on. Ninety-eight years ago, huh? A timeline hiccup like that, Nick would almost be tempted to say that the guy had been a synth with implanted memories if he hadn't helped put down the bastard himself-- and Kellogg had certainly taken the damage from Li's grenades like a human would. No, he was human, even if his bits had been replaced. So what-- had the Institute implanted junk memories into a human being?

Or was Kellogg really that old-- older than Nick himself?

The next few memories were relatively normal in comparison. Nothing in them smacked of anachronism, but nothing in them was particularly relevant to current events, either. It was all backstory, all fluff material that meant little to Nick and less to Teddy. About all it told them was that Kellogg had a reason to want to die at Li's hands like he had.

Then came the first meeting with the Institute. Now, _that_ was interesting.

"Is it just me, or do those synths look really wrong?" Teddy pointed out. And then it was Nick's turn to lean forward, narrowing his eyes at the screen.

They weren't wrong. They just weren't what anyone was used to anymore. "Those're Gen 1 synths," Nick said grimly. "Institute hasn't made those in sixty some-odd years, let alone used 'em. Dumb as rocks, ugly as sin."

Teddy snorted. "I think you're doing sin a disservice there, Nick."

"Point is, it's more fuel for the broken timeline theory." The detective tapped the screen with a metal finger, making a _tink_ ing sound. "I dunno how, but our friend Kellogg's managed to beat the clock. Which means any of these memories could've happened at any time while Li was on ice."

"This is gonna bite us in the ass, isn't it?" Curiously, Teddy didn't sound afraid or worried so much as he just seemed resigned to it.

But Nick had to disagree. If anything, it was gonna bite Li in the ass.

\---

Li burst out of the memory lounger and practically sprang to his feet, taking Nick by the shoulders with a gleam in his eyes and a bright smile on his face.

" _Teleportation!_ " he crowed.

"Are you all right?" Doctor Amari asked, unsure.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine-- _Nick!_ " Li was positively beaming. Nick couldn't help but find it infectious. "Seamless matter-to-energy conversion without any loss in the transfer! _HAH!_ "

Nick chuckled. He couldn't quite remember a time when he'd ever seen his partner so enthusiastic about something. "Guessing you like that kinda thing?"

"Are you kidding? We've been theorizing about this sort of thing since the inception of relativistic physics! No, even earlier!" Grinning, Li stood on tiptoe to put his arms around Nick's battered neck and yank the old detective down so that they were nose-to-nose; the motion knocked his hat slightly askew. "This is the sort of advanced science that I live for, and the Institute has it."

"Yeah?"

"Yes!" Li was adamant. "And I'm going to steal it back."

"You're gonna steal science from the Institute," Nick said, dubious. "Along with your son."

"Absolutely."

"How do you plan to do that?"

"Hush. I'm still working on that. Don't rush me."

Nick shot a glance at Harkness, who was in the process of climbing out out of the other lounger. The Courser was a bit more disoriented than Li had been, having to lean on Teddy for a moment before he was able to regain his footing.

"The key has to be that scientist," Li continued. "All we need to do is get to this Glowing Sea place and find him. He has to know something. Why else would they send a mercenary out to assassinate him after he left?"

Teddy was the next one to speak up. "You sure he's alive? We don't have a clue what the timeline on this is."

"Of course I'm sure. Didn't you hear the radio? That was Travis talking, and it was recent. He specifically mentioned one of Piper's more recent issues of Publick Occurrances. Contextually, I'd say it was the Synthetic Truth issue." So Li had been paying attention, too. "It can't have been more than a couple of months back, which means Kellogg had little to no time to complete his mission after he fled Diamond City to go hide in a bunker."

"Sweetheart," Nick said gently, "d'you even know what the Glowing Sea is?"

Li blinked up at him. "The Atlantic, I suppose?"

Nick cringed. A good guess based on the name, but way off the mark. "It's where the big bomb got dropped," he told his partner; all previous enthusiasm and excitement fell away from the man's face. "That whole area's irradiated all to hell."

"So?" Teddy said. "We load up on Rad-X and RadAway, suit up with some power armor. Can't be that bad."

Silence reigned for several seconds as Li broke away from Nick to turn and glare at his fellow Vaultie. The only one in the room who wasn't surprised by the reaction was Nick; though for his part, at least Teddy seemed to understand that he'd said something wrong.

"Um...?" Teddy ducked his head and had the decency to look sheepish. "Sorry?"

It was obvious that it took most of Li's self-control to not clock the poor kid in the jaw. Nick stepped up and took his partner's right hand in his own fully working left one, gently prying the man's fist open. It was fine. Teddy didn't know. "We'll figure something out," the detective said, a blanket statement that could just as easily be meant for everyone.

Except it wasn't. And Li gave Nick a tiny nod and squeezed his hand in turn to show that the message was received. They'd find a way to get to that scientist. Even if it meant trimming an advanced radiation suit down to fit or something.

Then Harkness got a weird little frown as he glanced around the room. "Wait. Where'd Arcade go?"

Welp. So much for not wandering off on their own.

 


	12. spinning song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for today's chapter actually has a chinese version? I'm trying to find a good link but it's hard when Youtube is being such a brat.
> 
> Fever's starting to get better! That doesn't stop me from being silly though. I will be silly 'til the end of time. And if you haven't figured it out yet, sometimes Ted is a TINY BIT IMPULSIVE with no regard for the consequences of his being a complete nutterbutter.

In the end, Arcade found them instead of the other way around.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, ducking his head to avoid a light fixture. The building that the Hotel Rexford had been before the war was old even by the standards of the time, old and dated and not made for people who were six foot four. "I was making friends."

Teddy sighed from his position on a lobby couch; pretty far from where Nick was at by the bar (on purpose, since the kid couldn't handle Nick's cigarette smoke all that well), but the room was enough of an echo chamber that the old detective could still make out what was being said. "Just what we needed: more strays," the kid said. "What's your new friend's name?"

"Robert Joseph MacCready," came a third voice from behind the tall doctor. A head topped with a hat poked out, followed by the rest of the guy. He was small, almost as small as Teddy, but somehow he gave the impression of being even scrawnier in spite of the way he seemed to strut around. "I'm told you got caps for m--"

Then he actually saw Teddy and stopped his tracks, and Nick had to chuckle at what followed.

" _You_ ," MacCready sneered. He stormed over as quick as his bowlegged gait would allow him to, and hoisted Teddy up off the couch by the lapels of his bomber jacket. "You sonuvva-- Why the heck are you here, huh? Come with the rest of the Brotherhood to screw up the Commonwealth just like you did with DC?"

"Whoa, whoa. Okay." Teddy scrambled to get his footing, pushing the couch back a few inches accidentally in the process, and tried to gently pry MacCready's fingers away from his coat. "Obviously there's some kinda misunderstanding..."

"Like hell there is! You think I'd just forget somebody like you, especially after all the crap you pulled?" Face twisted into a snarl, MacCready threw Teddy back against the couch. "Little Lamplight. You stole everything - _everything_ \- that wasn't nailed down. And then, just like that, poof! Never seen again."

Recognition flashed in Teddy's eyes. "Wait. MacCready? Mayor MacCready? That's you? Shit, I thought you guys must've died when the Enclave rolled through."

"Just who do you think you're talking to? Like I'd let the Enclave 'roll through' my town." MacCready planted a foot against the couch to lean forward and glower at Teddy. Not exactly intimidating, but he was trying. "I didn't sleep for three days, all because _someone_ took most of our ammo and grenades, along with the laser rifle from one of our best marksmen. I had to rig up the cave with bottlecap mines and watch the entrance like a freakin' hawk."

"Yeah?" Teddy grinned. "Hey, nice job on that then. I'm impressed."

"I don't give a crap whether you're impressed or not!"

Something seemed to click with the Vaultie at that point. "Wait, are you... Censoring yourself? Seriously?"

From off to the side, Arcade snorted with barely-contained laughter. Meanwhile, Nick couldn't help but think that if MacCready were a cartoon character, he'd have steam coming out his ears. "Y'know what? Screw you, buddy. I don't need your caps."

Fuming, MacCready turned away and looked for all the world like he was about to stomp on out again. But Teddy had other ideas. "Hey, hold up. What's this about caps, huh?"

MacCready sighed. "I'm a mercenary. It's a living, got it? I swear, if you get all sanctimonious on me--"

"Wasn't gonna. How much d'you charge?"

"For you? Five hundred caps."

Nick let out a low whistle, taking a long drag from his cigarette while he watched the proceedings. Teddy glanced between the scrawny merc and the tall doctor with his lips pressed together thoughtfully. "That what you usually charge people, or just me?"

"It's twice what he quoted me back at the bar," Arcade noted.

"Five hundred caps," MacCready repeated, puffing his chest out to look bigger than he was. "I'm not gonna work with you for anything less. And even then I hope you don't expect me to keep my mouth shut or be nice to you, 'cause I'm not gonna. That'll cost you even more."

Teddy shrugged. "Sounds fair. Arcade needs somebody to keep an eye on him. I can't exactly put a price on that."

The doctor snorted again. "You're getting swindled."

"Well, it's this or actually try to restrict your movement somehow to keep you safe from random bumblefuck raiders and Institute-napping, and we all remember how well that worked out back in Chicago."

"I just wanted to see the old base! I can't help that the Brotherhood were checking credentials at the gate."

Teddy's withering look spoke volumes.

\---

The steadily growing merry band of misfits stayed the night in Goodneighbor; the woman behind the counter at the hotel was shocked to get so much business at once, and offered them a fairly reasonable price. Or at least, she offered Harkness and Li a reasonable price. A pretty face could get a lot done, after all, but two in the same room could just about move mountains.

And the room itself, now, that was downright gorgeous. Nick was almost floored by how well it'd been kept up over the years, with a proper queen-sized bed and wallpaper that had somehow managed not to peel. Sure it was stained and the floors creaked, but by post-war standards it was positively decadent. Miles better than the accomodations he had back in Diamond City.

Li was quick to squeeze past him, proceeding to flop bonelessly onto the huge bed with an exhausted sigh. "God," his partner said, muffled by the covers. Nick had to smile.

"Not gonna take your shoes off first?"

"Mmf. Too much effort." Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Li watched closely as Nick busied himself by closing the door, turning on the lamp, and shrugging off his coat with the unhurried ease of not having to be anywhere. "Too many things packed into one day. I have completely run out of fucks to give."

"That so?" Nick draped his coat over a nearby chair and sat down next to his partner, reaching over to run his good hand through long, dark hair. He could only vaguely feel how soft it was, but even that seemed like more than enough. "You okay?"

Li leaned into the touch, humming quietly. "Ask me later."

"I'm askin' now." Later, they'd get distracted. Later, Li could dodge the subject. Nick knew better than to trust 'later'. "C'mon, sweetheart. Somethin's eatin' you."

His partner sighed, rolling onto his side and catching Nick's hand in his own. Bringing it to his lips and kissing the knuckles gently. A comforting gesture, but it was hard to say whether that comfort was meant for the detective or himself. "I'm useless, Nick," he said after a while. "If I were any good I'd say 'to hell with it' and march right down to where that scientist is."

"End up a ghoul, that way," Nick murmured. "Rather you not do that, t'be honest. Gotten kinda partial to that face'a yours."

"I knew you only liked me for my looks," the man teased.

Nick chuckled, shifting his hand to stroke his thumb over Li's cheek. "Yep, y'got me red-handed, officer. Can't help that I've got a taste for the finer things in life."

"Well, I'll take that over being called 'exotic' anyday."

Yeah, Nick could see people calling Li something like that. He could see himself knocking out a few teeth for it, too. These days, it felt like just letting that kinda thing slide was the more exhausting option.

Rolling again to lay flat on the bed, Li patted the covers in an obvious beckoning gesture. It took some maneuvering for Nick to lay down next to him - shoes, weapon holster and everything - but once that was done, Li happily swung his arm around Nick's torso with a contented sigh, slotting himself up against the detective's side. Nick dutifully adjusted his internal temperature for the sake of his partner's comfort.

"This alright?" It meant Li was laying on his good arm, but hey. Couldn't have everything.

The human nodded against his chest. "You're not the best pillow, but it'll do."

"There's covers, y'know. Sheets and whatnot. Actual pillows."

"Too much effort. Much rather use the robot instead." Li smirked, trailing his fingers over the buttons of Nick's shirt. "I suppose you'll just have to live with it, won't you?"

"Guess I could power down for a few hours," Nick conceded. Not that he could say no-- ah, hell. They hadn't really talked, had they? Li had just changed the subject again before diverting Nick's attention straight to cuddling.

But, well. Shit. How could Nick disturb him at that point? Li hadn't wasted any time in getting comfortable. It'd practically be a sin. Like upsetting a sleepy kitten.

Resigned to his utter lack of willpower, Nick brought his right hand over to gently pull the tie out of Li's hair and let it fall loose. Couldn't exactly reach with his left - the angle was too awkward, and Nick wasn't anywhere near flexible enough - but he knew it'd get uncomfortable for Li if he didn't.

Then a few of the soft, dark strands decided to snag in one of the exposed joints, and... Well.

"Ow! What the--" Li twisted to try and see what was going on just as Nick was trying to pull his hand away, which only tugged at it worse. " _Hey!_ Would you stop that!"

"Uh." Meekly, Nick let his hand fall back down-- which resulted in more snags. "Whups?"

The glare he got in return told him that he probably wasn't going to be forgiven for this one for a while.

 


	13. it's raining somewhere else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had a rough couple of days. Writing this was cathartic. Made me feel better.
> 
> Deacon is such a shit. You just know he only noticed that about Li because he's been watching him like a hawk. You fucking creeper, Deacon.

The next morning - after a quick meeting to decide who was going where - everyone went their seperate ways. Nick with the Lone Wanderer, Li with that Courser fellow, and Arcade with that mercenary he picked up.

Yes, Li went with Harkness. Someone had to show the towering, grumpy sod the way to the Railroad, after all. Beyond that, it made for an excellent chance to learn a thing or two about the Institute. He could do without the magnum - every time the Courser fired, it set Li's teeth on edge - but beggars couldn't be choosers and all that, right? It was this, or try very hard not to be ill inside a suit of power armor himself as he tried in vain to aim properly with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.

As much as he didn't like Davies, he was glad the kid had stepped up and volunteered to go to the Glowing Sea in his place. No questions asked, no having to peel his shirt up and show off old scars as explanation like he had with Garvey all the way back in Concord. Just a simple _I can't use power armor_ and that was it.

Before they'd left, Nick had kissed him and told him to stay safe. He'd scoffed at that, of course. Nick was in far greater danger than he was, and that danger was a good deal more direct. Apparently the Glowing Sea had all manner of foul half-starved monsters living in it, fighting for dominance and scraps over the scorched ground. Nick might not make a very good lunch, but he'd make for a fine chew toy. Being what he was, it was likely he wouldn't even die straight away.

It wasn't hard to imagine Davies' armor being peeled away by a hungry deathclaw, either. Like the skin off of a nectarine, really. From the way Harkness had reacted to the plan, he didn't have any trouble imagining it either, but he'd been fine once Davies had reassured him that they'd be careful. An enormous amount of trust, that.

Li knew all of that was nothing more than a highly unlikely worst case scenario, however. The most likely outcome would be that Davies would come back in a week half-draped over Nick, radiation-sick and scruffy. Successful, too, because of course they'd be. Nick might be a little more battered than usual, but that was nothing a bit of time with a screwdriver, some electrical tape, and a soldering iron couldn't fix. There wasn't much point to worrying.

So, back to the Freedom Trail. Li almost didn't have to follow the red line, having spent a good chunk of his life in Boston before the war; he could navigate it by landmarks alone. With Harkness acting as a bodyguard, he didn't have much to do in the way of defending them, either (and it was quite the novelty to not be the one with the best aim for once! Clearly Harkness was in better working order than Nick in that regard).

As such, boredom set in quickly.

"Do you read comics, Harkness?" Li asked.

Harkness snorted. "No. I read books."

Ooh, snooty robot. "Say it like that and I'm half-tempted to stuff you in a locker and call you a nerd," Li remarked, bringing up his pip-boy to poke at it. "Well, there's a broadcast on from the old days if you're interested. Silver Shroud audio dramas, bit of a mess if you're not familiar with the canon." An enjoyable mess. A mess made of cheese. But a mess, regardless.

For a while, Harkness didn't say anything. "...I'm not sure I would fit in a locker."

"Consider yourself lucky then, it's not something I'd recommend." Oh, the joys of being small. "I take it that's a 'no' on the broadcast, then?"

"I'd rather not."

"Hm. All right. What sort of music do you like?"

"Gershwin. Porter. Show tunes, I guess." A pause. "Why?"

"Channel-hopping on the radio. It's another twenty minutes to the church, and you're not really one for conversation."

Again, Harkness went quiet. "Sorry," he said eventually. "Got a lot on my mind."

"Oh? Worried about your paramour, I take it?" Of course that wasn't going to be the only thing, but one of the best ways Li had found to get information out of people was to be just slightly wrong on the initial guess; that way, they had to offer a correction.

Harkness was no exception to that. "Yes," he admitted, "but not because he's going into the Glowing Sea. He's... Familiar with that kind of terrain."

"Coming from DC, I can imagine he would be. Somehow I don't think the war was kind to that general area."

"You're not wrong," Harkness said. "The White House is an irradiated hole in the ground. Large portions of the city were flattened. The water in the river, the groundwater, all of it is unfit for human consumption." He pulled a handful of rounds from his coat pocket and popped them into his magnum, one by one. "So I'm not worried about him because of that, no."

"What are your concerns, then?"

Once the gun was fully loaded, Harkness twirled it once on his finger deftly before taking aim at a nearby raven and firing. The shot echoed through the debris-strewn city streets, cutting through the cold, dusty air that hung between the skyscrapers; the raven fell to the ground without a head, blood pooling on the cracked, weatherbeaten concrete.

Li's vision was good enough that he could see the bits of plastic, metal, crystal, all revealed to the open air. Some two century old reflex had made him go rigid at the sound, but he'd gotten better at relaxing of late, and he was mostly-fine by the time the Courser spoke again.

"They're watching," Harkness said. "Whether they're watching me, or him, or just general purposes spying, I don't know. But I know how they think." He holstered the magnum with a single fluid, practiced motion. He didn't meet Li's gaze as he spoke, a grim frown etching deep lines into his features. "To them, he's a high priority target. And if something were to happen..."

"Something?" Li echoed. "You think they'd take him?"

"I think they'd try. And I don't think Valentine could do anything to stop them if they did."

Which left it unspoken that Harkness thought he could do something. If it were anyone else, Li would call them an arrogant prick. As things stood, he'd seen enough to know that Harkness was probably a better combatant than Nick, even if he wasn't as good of a conversationalist.

But Harkness was also a realist. It would be next to impossible to lie to him, because he'd either take it as fact and be hurt later or see right through it and point it out. Even a pretty little lie would be hurtful one way or another to a man like that. And Li was no good at being distracting if the other person wasn't participating in the distraction; his approach to taking someone's mind off of something required the other person being up for a chat, which Harkness clearly wasn't. At least he wasn't up for cheerful, lighthearted conversation anyway.

So, Li decided to be as truthful as possible while still being as positive as possible. It probably wouldn't work - Harkness was determined to be bleak and grim about this, clearly - but he could certainly try. "Well, he has a set of power armor that's beyond even the models I know, and a plasma rifle that's been modded to hell and back," Li said. "I'd say he's well equipped to take on anything they throw at him."

"Heh." Harkness smiled. It was a sad kind of smile, one that Li found hard to read. "You're not very good at this, are you?"

"What, cheering people up? Filling them with hope? Never have been." Li grinned right back at him, knowing it probably wasn't doing much. Cheering someone with honesty just wasn't his thing, because honesty was a brutal thing. But smiling, maybe-- smiling was infectious, wasn't it? He remembered something like that from all the credit-filler psychology classes he'd slept through. "My usual method is to throw optimism and gallows humor at someone until something sticks. Is it working?"

"Somewhat." Indeed, Harkness did look a little better. "Thanks."

"Anytime, friend." Well! It was an improvement over being completely morose, surely. "Music, then?"

"Thanks, but I'd--"

"You'd rather not. Of course." Oh, to hell with it. Silence it was, then.

\---

Desdemona nearly had them shot when he got in the front door of the railroad headquarters; Glory looked tempted to shoot Deacon when the gangly agent got in the way and said they weren't to be shot.

"You'll want this one, Dez," Deacon said. Then he turned to Harkness with a broad grin and said, "Yo, A3. Decided to come back after all, huh?"

"I was told you folks might need a hand." Harkness nodded respectfully to their illustrious leader. "Desdemona. Been a while."

It didn't take long for Desdemona to connect the dots. When she did, she managed to look mostly unruffled by the news. "It's good to have you back, A3-21. We could use another heavy."

" _That's_ A3-21?" Glory blurted out. "I thought he'd be taller."

"Even the older Coursers are still the same height, ma'am," Harkness informed her.

"Eugh, none of this 'ma'am' bullshit, alright? It's Glory."

The Courser smiled automatically. "A pleasure, Glory."

Impressive. The man was quite a people-pleaser, wasn't he?

Desdemona led Harkness inside, followed closely by Glory with her minigun. Deacon remained outside the longest, smirking at Li and coming up to him long enough to hand him a gift: a sleek black customized pistol, complete with a silencer. "Saw how you got back on that op the other day," the agent mumbled. "Figured you could put a thing like this to good use."

Blinking, Li took the gun in his hands to examine it. The silencer came off neatly, and without it the gun seemed so much smaller it was ridiculous; for once, a weapon didn't look oversized in his hands. It was light, with its weight distributed in such a way as to imply it was made to have the silencer attatched. Made to be subtle, unobtrusive, accurate. Quiet.

Deacon smiled knowingly. Like he understood. "We get a lot of... Jittery types, I guess," he said. "Usually they're more iffy about energy weapons than standard ballistics, but it takes all kinds, right? Don't sweat the details, Tom puts shit like this together all the time. Takes standard ten mil rounds, so ammo shouldn't be too hard to come by."

It was more effort than most would put into accomodating such things, and Li was honestly stunned. Took him a few moments to respond properly. "Do-- do you think you could have another made?" he asked. "For Nick, I mean. Something like this would make an excellent replacement for that revolver of his." That loud, unsubtle revolver. Not a bad gun, but not great either. Gave Li a jolt with every shot. Worse yet, the recoil was taking its toll on Nick's wrist, which was in bad enough shape as it was.

The other agent scratched idly at his stubble. "I'll see what I can do," he replied. "Can't make any promises, though."

Sure he couldn't. Knowing Deacon, he'd already half-formed a plan on how to get the materials; Li wouldn't be surprised if it was finished before Nick got back. "I appreciate it. Thank you."

"Aw, jeez. No need to thank me. S'what friends do, right?" Deacon clapped him on the shoulder, grinning. "Now I better head in before folks start getting the wrong idea. Can't have that. Word travels fast down here."

Li put on his best pout. "I do have some standards, Deacon."

"True enough. I mean, I can't begrudge your preference for licking an ashtray soaked in motor oil."

Deacon had to dodge a smack upside the head after that.

 


	14. hello, planet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pppptthhhhhbt this one's been 90% done for a while and I decided to leave it where it was and not pile on another scene even though I'd half-intended to. It didn't flow right, so I cut it off.
> 
> Next chapter's probably gonna be another one with Li and Hark having adventures. Probably. Also texting.

Nick learned very quickly that Teddy had a lot to say.

"We're pretty familiar with teleportation, but I get it if Li doesn't know what's up," he'd say. "I doubt they let him into Big Mountain back in the day. Hot damn, that was a helluva trip. I'm technically a cyborg now because of that place, y'know? Well, I might've been a cyborg anyway. Pacemaker and all that shit. Does that count as cybernetics? Fucked if I know. I'm gonna go ahead and say it doesn't. These days the meds are anti-rejection drugs for the cybernetics instead of shit that keeps my heart from clogging up..."

Kid liked to hear himself talk. Or maybe he was just filling up space. None of it was bad, or grating, or anything like that. Sounded more like a stream of consciousness than anything else, and Nick had no qualms with that. Li talked a lot, too, except usually he invited Nick into the banter along with him.

"I'm not quite conceited enough to call myself part robot, though. Just because I've got the bits doesn't mean I understand the problems. That's like getting an organ transplant from, say, a woman, and then calling yourself part woman because of it. No, you're not, stop being a prick. Bits don't have anything to do with identity. Identity's the key thing. Even being the dirty robotfucker I am, I'm still human." Teddy paused mid-rant for a scant few seconds. "I'm also still Asian. Your boyfriend's wrong. Have I mentioned how wrong he is? He's such a little shit, Nicky, I swear."

"Gotta understand where he's comin' from on that, kid," Nick said. He couldn't help his wry smirk. "Pretty sure he was born in the mainland pre-war."

"Oh. Well shit. Now I feel like an asshole. Okay, I get where he's at now. Yeah, compared to that I'm kinda... Whoof, alright, yeah. That was dickish of me. I gotta tell him I'm sorry when we get back."

That was the other thing Nick found out quickly: this kid was willing to be corrected. Gently, firmly, didn't even matter if he got shouted at. He'd accept that he'd been wrong and adjust accordingly, so long as there was a reason he could see. Nice change of pace from most folks.

See, when Li had said that morning that he couldn't do power armor, Teddy hadn't asked why. He'd rolled with it. He'd said he'd go to the Glowing Sea instead. Said it couldn't be that bad. Harkness had started to say something, but Teddy had stopped him by saying he'd had worse radiation poisoning than that before. Then, when Li had tried to say that it was his responsibility and not anyone else's, Teddy lost the smile and turned deadly serious.

"Your responsibility is to stay alive long enough to see him, and be healthy enough to do so when you get the chance," the kid had said. "You can't just Rad-X your way through an irradiated shithole and come out of it all set and ready to go."

Li had given in after that. Good thing, too; just the thought of getting into a suit of power armor had drained all the color from his face. Left him shaking. Nick ended up slinging an arm around his shoulders, holding him until he managed to calm down. A lot of vets had come out of Anchorage just a little bit fucked up, and Nick had the unique privilege of remembering what it had been like after they'd come home. A few came out of it violent. Most just came out of it haunted. All of them were expected to act like nothing had happened afterward, like they could just go back to life as usual. That last one had rarely gone well.

And even if he wouldn't have understood a simple one-word explanation of _Anchorage_ , at least Teddy hadn't needed to have the concept of trauma explained to him. Made things a hell of a lot easier; made him a better person than most, too, for stepping up like he had.

Then Teddy took Nick out of his own thoughts by going on a random tangent about the ethics of robotfucking (with something about a robot named Fisto) and managed to be so goddamn tactless about asking after Nick's sex life that the old detective had to laugh. Yeah, a good person. A good person with a chronic case of foot-in mouth and a bad habit of saying exactly what was on his mind.

Nick liked this kid.

They reached the edge of the Glowing Sea towards the end of the day, making remarkably good time on their way thus far. Teddy declared that they were gonna stop for the night and they did so, right underneath the old highway overpass. As he climbed out of his power armor, he took care to pop the fusion core out and wrap it up in his bomber jacket, setting the whole thing up as a lumpy makeshift pillow on the patchy grass.

"Gonna take the first Rad-X dose with my meds in the morning," he said, stifling a yawn before clambering back up to go through the compartments of his power armor. "Stagger 'em out, every six hours at the most. Should have enough to last two weeks."

"Shouldn't take _that_ long," Nick mumbled.

"Yeah, well. Pays to be prepared." Teddy came away from the power armor with a flask - clean water, he'd explained earlier, even going as far as to offer Nick a taste before he realized how dumb that particular suggestion was - a bag of potato chips, and a pill bottle. "When we get out there, we don't take breaks, we don't stop until we find shelter. If I have to take the Rad-X every four hours instead of every six, just because that's when we manage to find a hole in the ground to hide away in so I can get the helmet off? Then that's what I'll do. I've got a timer set up in my HUD in the helmet, but if you could maybe back me up--"

"Will do." Sometimes being a synth came in handy. Sounded like Teddy did this sort of thing often, though. Made Nick wonder if Harkness got used as the stopwatch when it was just the two of them. "You've done this before, I take it?"

Settling down onto the ground, Teddy flashed Nick a crooked grin. "Yep. Usually on my own though. Hark can't do rads like this." A pause. "Well, alright, he _can_. Technically. But he's not properly insulated, so even though he'd last longer than a human, he comes out of it less okay and needing more recovery time. And possibly repairs."

Nick thought about that for a moment. "So that's why you let me come with instead," he guessed. "And you're not gonna let him go it alone, so you set Li up to go with him."

That grin again. "Exactly." The bag of chips was popped open, and Teddy leaned back against his not-pillow as he munched on them. "He's too sweet, man. He'd go up to some Institute fuck looking to be all diplomatic and try to convert them to the cause, and then? _Bam_. Dead. Dead or worse." The kid shuddered. "Not gonna let that happen, no sir. Those bastards don't get to take my robot. Not when I've spent this long fixing the shit they did to him to begin with."

Hell. With an attitude like that, Nick would be more worried about the poor bastards at the Institute who decided to get in between those two at all. "Not too concerned about me then, huh?"

"You, I can fix." Teddy didn't just sound confident in that, he sounded downright certain. "I'm not too familiar with Gen 2s, but back when we went to check out the Switchboard, I'm pretty sure I saw one trying to scoot its way across the floor with no lower half, only one very broken and wonky arm, and its head partly caved in. You fuckers are durable."

Nick chuckled. "Thanks, I guess."

"Yeah, well. Don't take it as an invitation. I still don't wanna hafta glue your legs back on or some shit."

Coming from Teddy, that almost sounded like concern.

\---

They got moving sometime around dawn the next day, the sun peeking over the horizon behind them. Teddy popped a Rad-X along with what he said were his usual meds - even handed Nick the bottles for inspection to alleviate any skepticism - and the six hour timer was started at around 6:43 AM. Then the fusion core was popped back into the armor, and the kid took just enough time to throw his jacket back on before stepping into the suit with practiced ease.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," Teddy quoted, a grim murmur that was amplified and made tinny by his helmet's pickup. Then he made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a cough. "Ow."

"All right in there?"

"Held in a sneeze. Hurts." After that he cleared his throat, which was probably the funniest sound yet. "Ugh. Whatever. Let's go."

Nick let Teddy lead the way, figuring that somewhere between helmet HUDs and pip-boys, the kid had to have some idea of where they were going. Better idea than him, at least. Featureless expanses weren't great for navigation, and apparently no one at the Institute had thought to equip him with GPS.

After that, the hours passed with little to break up the monotony besides Teddy's occasional tangential rambling (which only started up after the kid had stopped sneezing) and the occasional ambush by a half-starved critter. There were ghouls, for instance. Bloatflies. Mole-rats that damn near glowed. Radscorpions. Even a deathclaw at one point. All this gave Nick plenty of time to discover one more thing about Teddy--

The kid had what had to be the worst aim in the history of anything.

Now, Nick didn't have great aim himself. He was pretty sure it had something to do with being old and busted, but his depth perception was shot to hell, and the recoil from his revolver was hardly kind to his old joints. But Teddy? Shit. The kid had to be blind or something. When shooting at the deathclaw proved to have spotty results at best - much like it had with every other thing they'd encountered - Teddy gave up, holstered his plasma rifle, and charged at it. Then he punched it.

The crunch from his hydraulics-enhanced fist hitting the critter's skull was audible even from where Nick was standing. It staggered back, bloody and disoriented. A second swing knocked it out. After that, Teddy stomped on its head just to make sure it wouldn't be bothering them ever again.

"Remind me not to get on your bad side," Nick remarked dryly.

"You'd have to try pretty hard to piss me off, Nicky," the kid replied, flexing his armored hand as if to make sure he hadn't damaged its inner workings. "I'm reading four hours in on my HUD. Sound about right to you?"

Four hours. Rad-X was four to six. Teddy was surprisingly cautious for someone who'd just punched a deathclaw's face into a bloody pulp. "Not gonna try to get any farther?"

"Could, but I like not having my skin peel off." Teddy tried to wipe the gore off of his boot by scuffing it against the ground, only succeeding in caking irradiated dirt on his power armor. "I see a thing over there, but I can't make it out," he said, indicating in a south-by-southeast direction. "Whaddya think, is it shelter?"

Nick followed along the line that Ted pointed in, focusing on the structure in the distance. Partly obscured by fog and dust, but visible. "Looks like the top of an old church," he said. "Could make for a decent shelter if it's buried deep enough, I suppose. Not exactly lead-lined, though."

"I just need to be able to take my power armor off long enough to take my pills and give 'em time to work." It sounded like Teddy had done this kinda thing before.

"Might be somethin' in there that won't take kindly to our trespassing."

Teddy's grin wasn't visible, but Nick could hear it through the helmet's audio feed when the kid spoke. "And that, Mister Valentine, is what grenades are for."

This kid was nuts.

 


	15. snowy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Li no I'm not sure you get how exposure therapy works. Please don't hurt yourself Li, Nick will kill me if I let that happen. It's okay that you're healing, don't overdo it. Nooooo.
> 
> This is a more muted chapter. It should pick back up soon.

A beep came from Harkness's pip-boy - echoing in the empty back hallway out of Railroad HQ - and Li paused in pouring out a glass of whiskey to look up at the sound, glancing curiously at the Courser. The alcohol was customary after a successful mission, according to Desdemona; Li had to wonder if that was because the memory wipes left as bad a taste in her mouth as H2-22's had for him.

He understood why they were a thing the Railroad would allow synths to have access to if they so chose. Might've even been mildly jealous in a way, having longed to forget a few things himself. Still didn't make something that read a lot like euthanasia an easy thing to swallow.

But a pip-boy beep made for a far better conversation topic than the ethics of memory wipes, so that was what Li decided to talk about. "Haven't heard one make that noise before," he mused.

"Message from Ted," Harkness explained, already in the process of pulling the device on his wrist up to look at it. It was a vastly different model from Li's own, as was Ted's; they looked older, clunkier. Perhaps they were. "You didn't know they could send messages?"

Li shrugged lightly, filling the shot glass to the brim before handing it over; the bottle, of course, was his. "Never really knew anyone else who had one. The software behind the VATS aiming calibration was incorperated into midrange power armor, but not with any sort of efficiency or reliability. Do it wrong and you'll get sets of power armor snapping to their targets and snapping the wearers' bones in the process."

Harkness took it absently in his right hand and continued manipulating the buttons on his pip-boy with his pinky finger. "I wouldn't know about that. Ted relies on VATS, not me." His lip curled slightly in annoyance. "He forgot to connect the pip-boy to his power armor before he left."

"Well, if you're talking over those, then you can remind him. I doubt he can send messages while in the power armor, so he's clearly got a moment to himself." A long swig from the bottle was followed by a contented sigh; the whiskey was strong enough for Li to feel hints of the burn from it in his nose.

Meanwhile, Harkness met his own drink with something like disgust the moment it neared his nose. Li had to bite his lip to keep from laughing as the courser gingerly put the glass down on a nearby table before continuing. "He says they're in a church that's been buried up to the roofline. Something about being so deep that there's a metro car."

"At least they're out of the wind. Air and water don't technically get irradiated, the particulates in them do. I've no doubt that there's a high particulate count in the air in that church, but it's still better than being bombarded by what is apparently a constant gale-force radstorm."

"Yeah, he knows that." Harkness went quiet as he tapped out his reply, while Li calmly sipped from the bottle and watched.

Well. Anyone who had doubts about synths having feelings need only take a good look at this fellow to be proven wrong. Synths like Glory they could dismiss as a malfunction, or an outlier - Li had seen people do it in his time, treating people who stood up against tyrranical nonsense as dangerous indicators of a greater problem with a group of people as a whole who just wouldn't play by the rules the ones in charge made for them - but Harkness? Now there was a man in love, plain and simple.

Li could tell. After all, he was in the same boat.

"Ask him how Nick's doing," he said.

Harkness nodded, putting together another message. "Didn't like the power armor jump down through the hole in the roof, apparently," he answered after a while.

Li almost laughed whiskey through his nose at that. "Of course he wouldn't like that." It was Nick. Once around the time they'd been hunting for Kellogg, Li had just about needed to use his most convincing puppy eyes just to get Nick to step into a suit of power armor so they could bring it far enough to be able to sell it, and the poor old fellow had wobbled around like a newborn fawn most of the way. Power armor and Nick didn't get along well at all--

Wait. Who had done the power armor jump? Ted? Had Nick been left on the roof in the wind and static to have his circuits battered by the elements more than they'd already been?

"So how did that work, anyway?" Li made himself ask before he could jump to any more conclusions.

Harkness blinked, and a slight furrow appeared in his brow as he seemed to realize that he didn't quite know either. Another message was tapped out and sent; he read the reply aloud in the awkward monotone of someone unused to reading things aloud. "Says, 'picked him up and took him with, O-F-C' followed by a little... Face. Thing. It's a semicolon with a lowercase P."

"O-F-C is 'of course', Harkness," Li informed him gently.

The bewildered look on the Courser's face as he stared at the message was absolutely priceless. "Right." Admittedly it wasn't quite correct, but Harkness was a bit on the innocent side and Li didn't want to tarnish that with vulgarity any more than he had to.

Someone had obviously never had the opportunity to be a young person on a university-wide message board.

\---

Eventually Harkness did drink his whiskey - even downing a second shot, just as overfilled as the first - but it didn't seem to actually affect him in the slightest. He spoke just as clearly, didn't stumble, didn't wobble. Didn't even belch, even if he cringed at the taste.

Damn robot. With a tolerance like that, Li was having to actually pace himself for once just to keep up. If Deacon hadn't wandered over and taken the bottle out of Li's hands, Li could have foreseen a challenge in that. But no, Deacon had to drain all the fun out of it. What an ass.

"Tom's got a new toy for you boys to take a peek at," the agent said. "Might wanna be sober for this one."

What a ridiculous assumption! Li rarely wanted to be sober for anything. "A new toy, you say?"

"Yeah, put it together himself." Deacon's grin suggested wicked things, and Li quirked a bemused eyebrow at it. "You're science-y, figured you'd get a kick out of it."

"Sounds like something Ted might like to see," Harkness said, picking up his glass after tapping out what was likely a final pip-boy message. After that, off they went.

Tom, it turned out, was by the makeshift firing range with what had to be the most ridiculous looking rifle Li had ever seen. It had a display on the back that showed a number in bright blocky orange, it was lined with copper wiring and coils, and it was _massive_ \-- long, and heavy, and bulky. Scoped too, with a proper recoil-compensating stock, even if that just made the thing heavier.

Li wasn't sure what it was, but anything as ambitiously homemade-looking as that monstrosity had to be worth a look.

"Yo, Chairman!" Tom greeted when he spotted them with Deacon. "How's Deliverer workin' out?"

"Better than I'd expected." That little custom ten mil had already saved Li on the job once when he and Harkness had been clearing out the metro. Rounds for it were much easier to scavenge than fusion cells, given America's pre-war regulatory standards about energy weapons. He'd been able to find enough to keep himself going with it just by reaching in through broken car windows and fumbling around in glove compartments. "Mind telling me what you're working on?"

Tom hefted the rifle up for them to see. "Aw, this thing? Man, you ain't gonna believe this. Ever heard of a gauss rifle?"

Li stopped in his tracks as his breath caught in his throat. Heard of it? Of course he had. He'd used them, hand-crank to charge a shot and all. They were loud, like a cannon going off-- using it had almost always alerted enemies to his position, where the long black rifle stuck out from his white camo gear in the driving white snow. The trick was to shoot the scouts, the spotters, the sentries, the cameras, the searchlights.

(Their own cameras and searchlights being used against them. The Chinese had a foothold and the Americans were breaking it. He just had to get through it unscathed, and no American would be able to accuse him of treason ever again. He wouldn't end up in a camp, herded into cramped living conditions like sardines at a place like the Big Mountain facility to be experimented on by so-called men of science. He would ignore the bitter taste left in his mouth by the knowledge that he was shooting his own countrymen, maybe even his own kin, because at least he would survive--)

He felt a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently and bringing him out of his thoughts. "Ted used to have one," Harkness said.

Tinker Tom whistled. "Damn, man. How'd he manage that?"

"He got it down in DC, from a pre-war simulation of the battle for Anchorage. Win the simulation, get access to the stockpile."

Li had heard of that simulation. He hadn't been involved in making it, but he knew some of the people who were. "Was there a Benjamin Montgomery in that simulation?"

Harkness blinked down at him. "I... I think so? How do you know about that?"

"It's a long story." One that Li wasn't inclined to tell these people. Maybe later, but not yet. "Either way, _that_ \--" and at that point he pointed to Tom's rifle, "--is not a gauss rifle. It looks closer to a railgun than anything."

The engineer pouted. "Shit, dude. I'm tellin' you it ain't no railgun. This baby is the real deal."

"The gauss rifle I know had a hand-crank, and you had to feed it fusion cells every few shots," Li replied. "The barrel got hot enough to boil water with, if you could rig it correctly. We used it to make coffee."

"Oh, so you know you gotta use gloves to work this thing then, huh? That's good though! Means you ain't gotta have a tutorial." Yanking off his own work gloves, Tom handed both the gloves and the rifle to Li. "Ain't gotta crank it, just gotta hold the trigger to charge. Twenty rounds between reloads, each made specially by yours truly to work with the magnetic shit."

Li took the gun from the engineer's hands, fumbling for a moment at the sheer weight of it. It was at least eight pounds heavier than the ones he'd known in the military, but once he got the gloves on, it was alarming how easily the rifle fit into his hands.

Of course, Harkness was just a bit skeptical. "Are you sure you can even use that?" he asked.

Li shot him a glare. "I'm perfectly capable of handling big guns, thank you."

Somewhere in the background, Deacon snorted a laugh as Harkness mumbled "not what I meant"; both were ignored as Li sauntered right over to the little firing range.

It would be loud. He could only prepare himself mentally so much, but at least he wasn't having to do it completely sober. Evening out his breathing as he took aim through the scope at the farthest target on the range gave him something to concentrate on that wasn't his heart hammering away madly in his chest or the stock pressed to his shoulder. He took in a deep breath and held it as his index finger curled on the trigger, holding it until the coils along the barrel hummed with energy.

He let go.

The dummy near the far wall was ripped in half by his shot, splinters going everywhere; the concrete wall behind it ended up with a divot in it that was several inches deep. His ears were ringing, and it was only afterward that he realized his jaw was clenched so tightly that his teeth hurt. He let out a slow, steadying breath as he lowered the gun, gripping the hot barrel to keep his hands from shaking.

Nick would hate that he was doing this to himself. But then again, wasn't controlled exposure a form of therapy? The world had changed, and he couldn't afford to be frightened anymore. Fate wouldn't wait for him to heal.

And maybe... Maybe if he could heal a little faster, Nick would look at him with pride instead of pity and concern. Wasn't that worth something?

"Do you mind if I take this?" Li asked, turning to look at Tom.

"Psh, naw man. If you can shoot like that every time, ain't nobody who could do it better." Tom folded his arms as he leaned against a nearby pillar, chewing on his lip thoughtfully. "Could do a suppressor if the weight don't bother you."

A suppressor on a gauss rifle? "If you think it's possible, then I'm all for it."

"Aight." Tom shrugged. "Gimme a couple days."

Li nodded slowly, still clutching the rifle. He wasn't sure what good it would do, but the prospect of having something he was good at instead of fumbling his way through things using nothing but cleverness and improvisation was... Well. This would certainly be better than being helpless, at least.

Besides, it wasn't as if he could adequately protect anyone as he was.

 


End file.
